


Three’s A Crowd

by strangeandcharm



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, First Time, M/M, POV Original Character, Rough Sex, Slow Build Castiel/Dean Winchester, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-05
Updated: 2014-08-17
Packaged: 2018-02-13 13:54:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 25,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2153154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangeandcharm/pseuds/strangeandcharm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Okay, so, you’re a ghost. And you’re in love with Dean Winchester, but he doesn’t know you exist. Awkward, right? But not nearly as awkward as it gets when the man you love is rescued from Hell by an angel and you realize that they’re destined to end up together. So you find yourself caught in a love triangle between a ghost, a human and an angel, and you’re the only one who even knows it’s even happening. Frankly, it’s driving you <i>nuts...</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I know, I know, writing a fic from an original character's viewpoint doesn't really make you want to read it, but I hope you'll give this a chance! If nothing else, there's some sex. And it's not with the original character. So make of that what you will...
> 
>  
> 
> (Written for the Big Bang 2009. Originally posted on LiveJournal on 5 August 2009.)

There are two art posts with this, drawn by the amazingly talented Leyna, but don't click on them until you've finished the fic as they're spoilery! 

Link to art: [Master Art Post (Spoilery if you scroll down past the cover art, so be warned)](http://leyna55.livejournal.com/11762.html) and   
[Second Master Art Post (Very much not safe for work, unless you work in an interesting and broad-minded place)](http://leyna55.livejournal.com/11885.html)

~ ~ ~

 

 

It all started going wrong when the angel arrived.

Oh, alright, I know. Obviously it all started going wrong long before that. Dean dying, for starters. That’s pretty fucking wrong right there, and Sam crying over him and the blood all over me and everything – not a time I look back on with fondness. And then there was the whole deal of how I went to Hell with him, and yet I stayed behind as well, and if that’s not one royal headfuck I don’t know what is. Jesus, my existence has been seriously weird at times, I’ll admit, but that was about as weird as it can ever get. Well, I hope so, anyway. I don’t really want to think about what’ll happen if ever Dean gets cremated with me. I get the feeling I won’t like it.

No, what I’m trying to say here is that B.C. – Before Castiel, you see what I did there? – life was simple. Dean looked after his brother. That was all there was to it, and it was a valiant mission, and he did it well. He looked after Sammy. And if Sammy grew big and tall and started looking after himself, well, Dean never really noticed, and it wasn’t as though I could tell him. For a grown man, he can be remarkably dense at times. He’s so blinded by the love for his family that he can’t see what’s staring him in the face. Shit, I wish my family had been like that. Bunch of sonsofbitches they were and no mistake. All these years, I still feel sick when I think of them; this horrible sick feeling in my belly, which is stupid because I haven’t even got a fucking belly to start with. Huh.

(It makes me laugh, sometimes, how much I talk like Dean. I mean, you’re around someone for long enough and you start picking up their mannerisms, but I can’t do that ’cause I don’t have a body. So I picked up his speech. The dumb things he says, like “Whoa” and “Holy crap” and, yeah, I won’t deny it, the swearing. He used to swear like a trooper but he toned it down once Sam left for Stanford, mainly because John didn’t like it much. If I had a penny for every time Dean changed something about himself to please his dad, I’d... well, I’d have a lot of pennies. Fat lot of good they’d do me, anyway. No pockets, see. How’d I carry them around?)

So Dean was in Hell and the good Lord above decided that it was time to yank him out of there and bring him back. And shit, don’t think I wasn’t happy about it; I was thrilled. I’d have rented the Playboy Mansion and thrown a party to end all parties if only I could have. Dean – _my_ Dean – was alive again, and I was back where I was supposed to be, where I was _meant_ to be: following the Winchesters around the country, sitting in the back of their car, trailing after them on hunts, watching them sleep every night. (I don’t sleep, of course, because I’m a spirit. And it’s not like I can turn the pages of a book or anything – no hands! – so it can get pretty damn boring. So I just watch them while they snore. It’s relaxing. Don’t go thinking it’s creepy, either: you’d do the same, you know you would, except that you’d be able to get into bed with them if you wanted, and you’d be able to _feel_ them. Feel _Dean_. And that’s not fair on so many levels, I don’t even wanna go there.)

But that _angel_. The moment I saw him in Hell, I knew what was gonna happen. Dean doesn’t remember, mostly probably will never remember, to be honest, what with all the trauma and the fact he was almost a fucking demon by the time Castiel showed up. But I do, because I saw it. I had blood in my eyes, true, but I could still see, and when that angel stepped between Dean and the guy he’d been torturing on the rack, it was like time just stopped.

Have you seen _West Side Story_? If not, you should. It won ten Oscars in 1962, and I remember that night well because that was the ceremony where some hick gatecrashed the stage and hassled Bob Hope. My companion at the time thought it was hilarious and giggled like a loon, but I thought it was just _rude_. (Oh, and he also wanted _The Guns Of Navarone_ to win Best Picture, so from that you can infer that we did not have the best of relationships.)

Anyway, I digress. I do that a lot, I’m afraid. It’s a side-effect of having had nobody talk back to me in two hundred years – there’s nobody to tell me to shut the hell up, and to get to the point. Sorry. What I’m trying to say here is that there’s a scene in _West Side Story_ where Tony and Maria see each other across a crowded dancefloor and it’s like the world just goes away: they stare at each other, and you _know_ they’ve fallen in love. Just like that. The music quietens, the lights go all blurry, and then they do this adorable little dance and can’t take their freakin’ eyes off each other the whole time... And when Dean and Castiel saw each other in Hell, it was kinda like that.

But without the dancing, obviously.

And neither of ’em was wearing a dress, either.

Okay, this whole ‘analogy’ thing? I pretty much suck at it. Sorry. But you get my drift, don’t you? Dean and Castiel. Like Tony and Maria, they were meant to be together.

So where does that leave me?

 

~ ~ ~

 

Sam’s in the shower right now, and Dean’s staring at the computer screen and trying to summon up the energy to hunt for some porn. I can tell. I know him that well. But he’s not going to do it; he’s distracted, and he’s tired, and while his brain is telling him that he needs to relax, which usually means that he needs to see barenaked ladeez doing things barenaked ladeez tend to do on the internet, his heart (or his dick, for that matter) isn’t really up for it (pun intended).

Personally, I don’t care that he watches porn. It’s not like real sex, is it? It’s not like he’s cheating on me, as if I had any claim over him, anyway. It’s the same with all the girls he sleeps with. It’s just sex. That’s all: nothing in between. No feelings, no commitment, no bond. In all the years I’ve known Dean – and hey, I was there when he had his first sexual experience, and I have a feeling I’ll be around to watch his last – I’ve never once felt as though he genuinely _cared_ for somebody. Not Cassie, not Lisa, not that Carmen girl who appeared when he was under the Djinn’s spell (I missed that one, being stuck in that miserable warehouse while he went off to dreamland, and that made me sad because it would have been nice to see him happy, if only for a little while). He thought he cared about them, but he didn’t; he never fell deep enough. Not as deep as you fall when you’re in love. Pretty fucking deep.

And he’s just starting to realize that now, even though he doesn’t understand _why_ he’s starting to realize it. Even though he doesn’t know it’s because he’s finally bonded with somebody. Even though he doesn’t recognize ‘love’ unless it’s for a member of his family.

I can tell. Like I said, I know him _that_ well.

He’s looking at the screen, but his eyes aren’t focusing, and I come to stand behind the table so I can get a better look at them. They’re bloodshot because he hasn’t been sleeping (welcome to my world, Dean) and he hasn’t shaved for a few days, though I know he will soon because he doesn’t want Sam to think anything’s wrong. He’s putting on a show, all bravado and quickfire puns, but underneath it all he’s being eaten away.

It’s Hell. Of course it’s Hell. I saw what happened to him down there, and he hasn’t told anybody yet, so it’s eating him alive. The only person who knows is that damn angel, but he’s not said anything to him about it, because he’s an angel and they don’t have feelings, do they? I’d be surprised if Mr Feathers even knows Dean’s in pain. It’s a good job I’m here. I understand what he’s going through. I understand _perfectly_.

It’s just a shame I can’t do anything about it.

The last time Dean saw the angel, it was when Castiel sent him back in time (and me, of course; I’m always dragged along, whether I want to go or not. That’s my lot in life. Or, uh, death). When Dean got back, he found out what Sam’s been up to with Ruby – he saw his brother exorcising a demon with his mind, and realized that he was being lied to. I wish I could’ve told him. I’ve known all along, of course; I was with Sam while Dean was gone, as much as I was with Dean in the Pit. I saw what Sam went through, and I went through it too, in a way. I may be a spirit, a ghost, a phantom, but I still have feelings. I can mourn.

Sam went through his own kind of Hell after Dean died, and Ruby was there to steer him through it, and Sam came to depend on her. And okay, so Sam’s using his powers now, but he’s using them to do _good_. Dean was pissed with him, God yeah. He was furious. But Sam’s not evil, and I don’t think he ever will be, and Dean’s got his own guilt to deal with so he projected it onto his brother.

I could be wrong about all this, of course. I can’t see into the future. They said I could, and that’s why they drowned me – well, among other reasons – but I really can’t. I’m not a seer. I’m just a spirit, and a mightily worried one at that.

Dean’s got freckles, and they’re standing out on his nose right now because he’s sitting in the sunlight from the window. That’s kind of how I knew he wasn’t going to look for porn – he doesn’t like watching it during the day. And the computer screen is all washed out from the light, too, and he hasn’t made a move to angle it so he can see it properly. He’s just... staring. Thinking.

“You need to forgive him,” I tell him. “He was in pain, and Ruby was there. He’ll tell you, one day, but until then you gotta go easy on him.”

Dean blinks, but he doesn’t hear me. He never hears me.

I sense something – a shifting; a stirring in the air. No, not so much the air as the plane of existence the air is _in_ , a plane I’m sensitive to because it’s where I live. There are wingbeats and the TV flickers and loses its signal, playing static instead of _The View_ as Castiel materializes behind Dean. It’s a cool sight. Even I have to admit that it’s a cool sight, and every time I see the angel my non-existent heart sinks.

“Dean,” he says in that goddamned deep gravel-pit voice of his, and if I could feel my hair stand on end, I would surely feel it stand upright as he speaks.

Dean closes his eyes and sighs. “What now?” he says, and stands up. He turns to face his visitor and again I’m reminded of the sight of them both in Hell: a broken human soul and a full-blown angel, all glowy light and wings, staring at each other in amazement while blood and misery stained the very air around them.

Huh. I can get damned poetical at times, can’t I?

“You saw what your brother is doing,” Castiel says, shooting a glance at the door to the bathroom. Sam’s humming a song behind it and water’s sloshing. I’ve seen him in the shower enough times to know that he’s getting most of it on the floor instead of down the drain. That’s what happens when you’re nine feet tall and built like the Hulk, and shower cubicles are built for Barbie.

“Yes,” Dean snaps. “Also? Way to break the news to me, Cas. Next time, give me some warning, okay? A little heads-up? That was one shitty night for me. I got to watch my grandparents die, and then _wham!_ , you have me walkin’ in on Sam using his powers. What’re you, a sadist?”

“You needed to know.”

“Damn right I did, but I don’t appreciate you playing me like a puppet!” Dean is furious. I like him like this, these days. I’d rather see him angry than worn down and tired. “Look, I know you angels think he’s evil. I know you think he’s on the path to the Dark Side, but...”

“His path is not determined.” And oooh, angel or not – my nemesis or not – he does sound hot when he growls.

(What? I might not have a body, but I still have a mind that remembers how a body would react to a sound like that. He’s not exactly bad-looking, either, which personally I think was a totally deliberate choice on his part. I know that if ever I had the chance to inhabit a body again, though, I wouldn’t give a flying fuck what it looked like. Just to touch something again, to feel air in my lungs and the sun on my face... Oh well, a ghost can dream.)

“His path is none of your goddamn business,” Dean tells the angel, and if I could’ve waved pom-poms of support in the air behind him, I would have. “He’s my brother, and nothing to do with you. You need to quit meddling in our lives.”

Castiel regards him with absolutely no expression on his face at all. Nothing. “Everything is our business, Dean,” he says. “The fate of the world is at stake. You must trust me on this.”

Dean snickers. “Trust you? You threatened to throw me back into Hell. How could I ever trust you after that?”

The sound of the shower stops. Sam coughs in the bathroom. Dean flicks his eyes over to the door, and when he flicks them back, Castiel is gone. Damn, that angel’s fast; even I didn’t see him leave.

“Son of a bitch,” Dean mutters under his breath, and leans on the table, lowering his head. I see his jaw go tight, his forehead furrow, and I see the fight go out of him like air leaving a balloon. He stands like that for a few minutes and then stalks over to his bed, flinging himself down on the mattress. By the time Sam walks out of the bathroom without the merest clue that anything’s happened in his absence, Dean is lying there with an arm thrown over his face, pretending to sleep.

I watch as Sam stares at him thoughtfully, trying to gauge if he should be worried that his brother is, yet again, sleeping during daylight hours. And then I wonder when Dean will realize that Castiel had no need to stop by today at all; the angel just turned up because he wanted to see him. It’s funny how two souls can meet and have a _connection_ in one place and then one of them completely forgets about it somewhere else. I suppose it’s the only way Dean’s brain can cope with all the memories – some of them get buried, and while there’s still a gravestone on display, a granite-hard, cold reminder, the majority of them lie hidden.

I wonder how long it will be before he digs this one up. I hope he never finds a shovel.

 

~ ~ ~

 

I’m not corporeal. I haven’t been since 1799, and yeah, it still bugs me I never lived to see the turn of the century, although obviously I saw in the 19th century as a spirit. I just couldn’t get drunk to celebrate. I’m sure my corporeal bones are dissolved by now, too, little chips of calcium at the bottom of my woeful, unloved, unmarked grave outside that overgrown and ruined churchyard in Oregon. I’m just a wisp, really – a thing that floats through the world, pulled along by my companion, whoever he or she may be at the time, forced to go wherever they go with no choice in the matter. And the kicker is that none of them know I’m there. Not a single one. Not even Dean, who deals with the paranormal every day. That’s a real gutpunch, you know?

I sit in the back of the Impala, feeling no leather under my form, because my form isn’t really a form as much as it is a _representation_. If someone could see me (which happened once, in the 1920s, at a club in London frequented by a group of spiritualists, although the person who saw me was as drunk as a skunk and nobody believed them) they’d see a shape, a body, but no real face. Just a suggestion of one.

I’ve been a spirit for so long I’ve forgotten what I used to look like. I think I had brown hair, but I could be wrong. I was only 17 when I died, and I’ve been a ghost for far longer than I was ever alive. That makes me sad. Frankly, if I hadn’t had such varied, interesting and diverting companions over the decades, I’d probably be insane by now. Which, in this line of existence, means _poltergeist_. Those dudes are fucking psycho, man. I’d hate to end up like that. I’ve seen enough of them try to kill the Winchesters – and Bobby, of course – to make me think I’d rather spend eternity shut in a locked drawer than go that way. And I did that for three months, actually, when Bobby first became my companion, so I know how boring it is to see nothing but blackness when someone’s not wearing you.

Dear old Bobby. Out of everybody I’ve been with over the years, he was the person I was most fond of until Dean came along. Wait, did I not mention he was my last companion? I was with him from a few months after he lost his wife to a demon and I learned the tricks of the hunting trade as he did.

S’funny, before him I used to think I was a one-off: a ghost haunting a cursed object, what a cliche now, but back then I really thought I was amazing. Through Bobby I figured out that there’s a big old world out there, and a fucking scary one at that. I’ve seen things, both with him and the Winchesters, that would make me shit a brick if I was human. Probably a good job I’m not.

We’re heading to Bobby’s now, and I’m happy. I love our trips to South Dakota; it feels like going home. Dean’s still pissed with Sam, of course, because that boy can hold a grudge, but he had some fun in Pennsylvania on that crazy vampire shapeshifter job and I think he’s easing off a little. He’s not letting on so much, anyway, and their relationship seems a bit better. Dean’s drinking, though, and Sam hasn’t really noticed how much yet, so there’s an explosion waiting to happen; and Dean’s not sleeping, either, only snatches here and there during the day, or short stretches at night which usually end in a nightmare. Sam’s noticed _that._

What Sam hasn’t noticed, what neither of them have noticed, in fact, is that every night an angel stops by and watches over Dean for the few hours he does manage to sleep.

Which is all well and good, but that’s _my_ fucking job!

I have to say, though, that Castiel seems to be the reason Dean gets any sleep at all, because on the nights he doesn’t turn up, Dean tosses and turns and eventually gets out of bed and drinks. And I’ve noticed he’ll always have a nightmare after the angel’s gone, as though the bastard’s keeping them at bay for him.

It makes me angry, because I want to hate Castiel so much, and yet I can’t. He’s in love, just like me, only he’s an angel and he doesn’t know what to do with the feeling. And he’s helping Dean as much as he can, which isn’t really much, to be honest, but it’s a start. It’s ridiculous really: I’ve got a love rival, and he doesn’t even know I exist, and neither does the man we’re both in love with, and this is some fucking messed-up triangle that I can’t even see ever being acknowledged.

That’s the other thing. The thing that keeps me instinctively disliking the angel, even though I know he’s in love with Dean, and he’s better for him than I ever would be. How come he can’t see me? He’s an _angel_. He moves around the same plane as I do, and yet he’s never given either me or the amulet so much as a glance; as far as he’s concerned, the necklace around Dean’s neck is just a necklace, and I’m invisible.

All I can think is: am I really that unimportant?

And that hurts.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Bobby cheers me up. Bobby always cheers me up. I kinda want him to be my Pa, seeing as my own Pa was such a bastard, and it amuses me to picture him having kids and just being the best father ever, although it also saddens me because he never did. I also get the feeling that if Bobby ever saw me he’d do his damnedest to help me, although obviously we’d have to get past the whole “shooting me with rock salt” thing first.

“So have you heard any more from the angel?” he asks Dean, who’s got his mouth full. (Tacos... I’ve never tried tacos. They look great. Fuck, I miss food, which rather cruelly has been getting steadily more interesting since the turn of the 19th century. I haven’t got a clue what Skittles would taste like on a tongue but I could stare at them for hours. Why is some food so pretty?)

Dean tries to answer but nearly spits across the table, so Sam smirks and answers for him. “Castiel’s stopped by to see Dean a few times, but I haven’t met him yet,” he says, and I think to myself, _If only you knew he was sitting on your bed last night, watching your brother snore._ “I get the feeling he’ll just pop up one day and ask us to save a Seal or something, and we’ll have to jump like good little soldiers.”

“Yeah,” Dean grunts, wiping his mouth. “It’s like he’s that shouty Sergeant from _Full Metal Jacket_ , only without the shouting. He’s more of an ‘icy stare’ kinda guy.” He pauses, crinkling his forehead in that way he does when he’s about to make a joke. “Does that make me Gomer Pyle? Man, that’s not a happy thought.”

“You gonna follow his orders, then?” Bobby queries.

Dean shrugs. “I dunno. I guess so, up to a point. Cas is an angel, after all – he’s one of the good guys, even if he is a jerk. I mean, he’s tryin’ to do the right thing, even if he’s driving us nuts to do it. You can’t really blame him for that.”

“Yeah, you can’t blame him for making you watch our grandparents die in front of your eyes,” Sam says quietly. It’s so unexpected that I stare at him, surprised, and Dean does the same.

“He doesn’t think like us,” Dean says hesitantly, after a moment or two. “He’s an angel... I don’t know if they’ve got feelings, or whatever, but I don’t think he knew what that would be like for me. He was just tryin’ to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Find out what Azazel was up to. I don’t think it was... malicious, or anything.” He sighs. “He’s just a soldier like us, Sam. He’s trying to win a war.”

It happens so suddenly I don’t even realize it’s me at first.

I think to myself, “Dean’s defending him.” And then I think to myself, “Why?”

Dean hated that the angel took him back in time. He was furious. Why would he try to excuse him for it now? Why would he disagree with Sam, of all people, over Castiel’s actions?

That’s when I realize that Dean’s starting to buckle. It’s actually going to happen. They’re actually going to end up together. This? This is the first sign.

The mug on the counter next to Bobby, the one that says “Arkansas: The Best State To Be In”, the one half-full of cold coffee with a cracked rim and a handle I’ve noticed is too small for Sam’s fingers to fit through, the mug that was sitting there minding its own business right up until Dean said, “He’s just a soldier like us”... that mug suddenly slides across the surface of the countertop and smashes to the floor.

The men stare at it, shocked.

“What the Hell?” Bobby grunts, looking around him. “Did that just move by itself?”

Dean’s on his feet, closely followed by Sam. “The room’s gone cold,” he observes, his voice all business. “Can you feel it?”

“Yeah,” breathes Bobby, and he reaches for his shotgun.

I’m stunned.

It was me.

I did that.

I moved something with my mind, and I made the temperature drop.

_I actually interacted with the world._

“Hello?” I say, wondering if they can hear me, but they don’t react.

“You got a spirit in here, Bobby?” Sam asks, and all I can do is stare at the smashed cup and think, _Yes. Yes, you fucking do._

 

~ ~ ~

 

It’s a pain in the ass, being tied to something physical.

I have a bit of leeway, true; I can probably move around ten, sometimes fifteen feet away from Dean (or Sam, or Bobby, or whoever’s wearing me) before I feel myself stretched too tightly and I have to return. It’s like I’m on an elastic band: go too far and then SNAP! I’m back where I belong. It used to drive me nuts but I’ve become used to it, over time, and it’s not as though it hurts.

That’s one thing I’ve always been grateful for: that it doesn’t hurt. I was lucky, in a weird way. The warlock who did this to me could’ve been so cruel, but he wasn’t. I guess he still had some feelings for me. I’d like to think so, anyway, but he probably didn’t because he cursed me regardless. And he took the side of the rest of the villagers against me quickly enough, although I suppose he had no choice because he was protecting himself. Of course, they’d had no idea he was a warlock. As far as they were concerned, I was the one casting the spells and ruining their crops, not to mention tickling kitty cats under the chin, so I was the one they punished.

I was drowned. People say it’s a good way to die, as long as you assume there actually is a good way to die in the first place. Well, I’m telling you this right now: being tied to a wooden beam and forced to gulp down lungfuls of muddy pond water is _not_ a good way to die. It fucking sucks. Although I’m glad they never hung me, at least – those poor Salem folk, a century before my time, had it real bad. I wasn’t jailed, either. The whole thing was over with in the space of a day. No time to sit around and worry over my fate; I was tried, sentenced and executed from sun-up to sundown.

Sometimes I see Sam and Dean exorcising a spirit or killing some kind of monster (Jeez, ‘some kind of monster’? Could Dean’s love of Metallica influence me any more if it tried?) and I wonder at what it’s thinking – is the spirit like me, stuck on Earth and unable to communicate its real feelings? Is the wendigo or the werewolf or the rougarou any more deserving of death than I was? I suppose I should find it ironic that I ended up accompanying two hunters on their travels around the country, but I don’t. That’s probably a bad thing, really, but I guess I’m so in love with Dean I can’t look at our relationship objectively.

Funny how you can still love, even though you’re dead. I wonder, sometimes, if Thomas made sure of that even as he cast the spell that cursed me.

Bastard.

I’ve not been able to move anything since we left Bobby’s. I’ve tried – God knows I’ve tried – but it seems it was a one-off incident. I keep thinking back to the time when Dean and Sam met Max Miller, one of the first special kids, and Sam managed to break out of the closet he was locked inside using the first stirrings of his powers. He’d told Dean he’d moved the cabinet shoved in front of the door involuntarily, like it was a punch or something. That’s how it felt with me. _Involuntary._ The killer thing is... it happened at the very moment I realized I was losing Dean. It happened when I was angry, and lost, and full of despair, but it happened before I’d even noticed those emotions forming inside me.

The fact that I unconsciously took those feelings and started smashing things?

_Poltergeist._

Yeah.

“No,” I say, staring down at Dean. “I’m not going to wind up like that. I’m better than that. If I lose you, I’ll cope. Castiel’s not evil. He’s a servant of God, isn’t he? He’s an angel, and he’s a fighter, and he’ll protect you. It’s going to be hard, giving you up, but I don’t have any choice, do I?”

Dean sleeps on. I can see in the dark – I can see well all the time, because I don’t have eyes to be affected by changes in the light – and I lean down to gaze at his face. I’ve done this so many times, right from the Christmas night when Dean unwrapped me and placed me round his neck until now, when Dean’s a grown man who’s suffered so much in his lifetime. He died, for fuck’s sake. Died and went to Hell. And yet he’s still here, and he’s still fighting, and doesn’t he deserve someone to love him after all that? Someone he can actually touch, and talk to; someone warm and powerful and _his_?

“You deserve it,” I tell him. “You deserve... him.” But my voice, which I’m fairly certain isn’t real because I don’t have a throat or lungs or a voicebox to produce it – though it sounds real enough when I hear myself – is suddenly cracking. “Dean,” I say. “ _Dean._ How am I going to let you go? I can’t, I really can’t... you’re mine, Dean. You’ve been mine for so long, and it’s not fair that he should just come in and do this. It’s not _fair_! Why did it have to be an angel? And a man? Why couldn’t it have been a woman? I could’ve watched you grow old with her, could’ve watched you play with your kids, could’ve felt that pull when you handed me over to one of them and told them to look after me because I’ll keep them safe...”

I have to stop, because I can’t cry but it sounds like I am, and it’s weird. And just as I do, Castiel arrives. The air does that weird rippling thing and then he’s there, at the very moment Dean’s eyes start to move under his eyelids, right as his nightmare begins. I want to reach out and wake him, to save him from the horrors in his mind, but the angel gets there first.

“Sleep,” he says, and touches Dean gently on the forehead. Dean’s eyes stop moving and he sighs in contentment as Castiel steps back.

I hate him.

“That isn’t even your body,” I snap, and retreat into the bathroom where I don’t have to see the way he looks at Dean.

My Dean.

I stare in the mirror for hours, seeing absolutely nothing reflected back at me, and wonder what I used to look like. Was I Dean’s type?

My eyes were brown, I think. Not blue.

Dammit.

 

~ ~ ~

 

There’s a moment of hope. A sick, twisted feeling of hope, true, but hope nevertheless. Dean defied both Uriel _and_ Castiel to keep a fallen angel named Anna safe. He chose her over him and it gladdened me, even when the rational part of my mind knew it was just his crazy sense of honor that made him do it. Dean’s a white knight, a protector, a champion; he’s the guy all the princesses would run to when they’re being chased by the dragon. It’s his thing, after all.

(Actually, Sam is too; I don’t want to sell him short. If anything, he’s more of a knight than Dean is these days, despite his dubious pastimes. I’m fairly certain I know what he’s been getting up to with Ruby, even if I’ve not seen it with my own eyes... or whatever counts as eyes with me, anyway. I saw enough of their dealings together in the months Dean was in Hell to understand their relationship. I know he has a yearning for blood in more ways than one, and I know she needs him for whatever reason, and I know they’re bound up with each other now whether Sam likes it or not. But he’s getting stronger, there’s no denying it, and he _has_ to get stronger because Lilith killed Dean and wants to destroy the world, and there are two great reasons right there for him to tear her to pieces. I wish he would. For Dean’s sake, I wish he would, because then Dean could be free.)

Afterwards, it doesn’t surprise me when Dean and Anna have sex. It never surprises me when Dean has sex. That boy has sex a _lot_. I know, because I’ve been there for every one of his conquests; I’ve even had women fondle me, or slip me in their mouths, which always makes me laugh because they have no idea what they’re dealing with. I may look like an ordinary – if somewhat ugly – amulet but there’s a whole lot more bundled up inside that metal than they realize.

I can’t feel it, of course. The amulet might be the physical object I’m tied to, and after all these years I think of it as part of myself, which is why I call it ‘me’, but it’s no more capable of feeling sensation than I am. The only time I ever _felt_ anything from it, through our connection, was when Dean was electrocuted in the cellar of some miserable shack as he fought a rawhead. It sounds like I’m making fun of the whole busines when I call it ‘shocking’, but it was; I could sense the charge running through the metal, and I could feel it burning a small mark on his skin as it heated up, and for a moment... just a tiny, fleeting moment, I could feel the electricity join the three of us, _human-amulet-me._ And then it was over, and Dean was half-dead, and I spent the next few days contemplating a life with Sammy while Dean rotted in a box somewhere.

Luckily that didn’t happen. Not for a few years, anyway.

Dean’s good at sex, just in case you were wondering. I might not have had sex myself since the year George Washington died (and shit, that’s a depressing thought – you need to stop reading this and have sex _right the hell now_ , you lucky bastard, because you won’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone) but I have memories, and I had a lot of it in my short lifespan, and I know a master when I see one. Dean’s a master. For a guy who spends his life killing things, he’s surprisingly gentle when he’s being intimate with someone. He’s not one for dominating his partner, or being violent, or even bondage or anything kinky like that.

He’s... look, I can’t believe I’m saying this because it sounds so lame, but he’s sweet. Don’t tell anyone. If word gets out that Dean Winchester is sweet in the sack, his name would be mud.

But he _is_ , and at times I find it heartbreaking to watch. All those girls, all those big eyes with different colors of eyeshadow, the nails with their rainbow varnishes, the lips with their gloss and their liners... so many of them, an endless parade of nameless, faceless women, and Dean treats them all like they’re the princesses and he’s the handsome knight. He wants them to need him, to feel wanted and special, and they fulfill that purpose for however long they’re in bed with him. They call him silly names, they talk filth, they tell him what they want him to do to them and he does. He rarely, if ever, asks them to do anything to him. For him. They’re doing that just by being there. By wanting him.

That’s the heartbreak, right there: Dean needing to be wanted. Even when he’s drunk on tequila after shooting pool in a skanky bar somewhere hell-knows-where, even after going back to the waitress’s apartment and waking up her roommate, who’s not best pleased; even after a catfight and being dragged into the stairwell outside the waitress’s door, even fucking the girl against the banisters while she tries to keep from crying out in case she wakes the neighbors, even _then_ , Dean needs to be wanted, and it’s why he doesn’t leave. It’s a sickness, really. He needs to talk to a shrink, or a sex therapist, but he can’t. Instead he takes what he can take from the willing females he meets on his travels, and he thinks that it’s enough.

It’s not.

As I watch Dean and Anna squeeze into his car and pull off each other’s clothes I can’t help but hope that Dean falls for Anna as hard as Anna fell for humanity. I feel mean and cruel, but I can’t help it. Jealousy is irrational like that. I’d rather Dean had this woman than that man; this ex-angel than that angel.

Castiel is perfect for him, and I’m starting to suspect, from the look I see in the angel’s eyes every time he watches Dean sleep, that Dean is perfect for Castiel. But I don’t want them to be together, because I want Dean all for myself.

I’m a bad person. Maybe I really will become a poltergeist, and it will be my punishment for thoughts like this. It’s a depressing idea, and I hate myself more than I’ve ever hated myself in both my life and my death.

I watch them until Dean comes, making that soft, sighing noise I’ve heard so many times over the years, and I wait until Dean lowers his head between two pale legs to coax a similar noise from Anna. Then I turn my back on the both of them, because I sense their sadness, only to see Castiel standing a few dozen feet away, staring at the car with a stricken look on his face.

“You’re not supposed to know where we are,” I scold him.

Castiel says nothing, just stares at Dean sharing himself with another soul. He doesn’t seem to be breathing, and I wonder if he needs to.

“So you’ve known we’re here all along but you’ve not told your brothers,” I say. “You’re a regular double agent, you know that?”

“Dean...” Castiel whispers, and then he’s gone.

I try very hard not to notice quite how much pain there was in that word.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Castiel stays away from Dean after the Anna incident, not even turning up to watch him sleep (which means Dean’s nightmares get worse, and so does his drinking, natch). However, I can’t help but wonder if the angel found hope in the fact that Dean tried to save him from Alastair. Dean knew that a crowbar to the face wouldn’t stop a demon, but he did it anyway. What does that say about him? And how he feels about Castiel?

Hell if I know. I think he was just trying to get revenge, but Dean’s motivations are starting to puzzle me. I’ve known him for so long; I watched him grow up, and I watched him die, and I watched him _after_ death, and yet he’s acting so closed-off and weird these days I can’t figure him out. Plus he’s so tired. He’s lost his edge. His thirst for Lilith, and all that is right and good in the world. Gone.

Poor Dean.

And oh, _Alastair._ There’s a story. Like I’ve said before, I was with Dean in Hell, and I spent all forty years watching that sick fuck of a demon fucking with Dean until he couldn’t fuck with him any more. If it was possible for me to hate anybody more than I hate my family and the folk of the now-empty village of Tavistock, Oregon, then I hate Alastair to the very depths of my spirit. What he did to Dean was beyond belief. What he made Dean do to others is even worse.

Which is why I was so surprised when Dean told Sam. Okay, so he revealed to his brother that he’d become a torturer – leaving out the fact he almost turned into a demon, though I’m not sure he remembers that far. But telling him that he _enjoyed_ it?

I guess hearing Dean say the words out loud was the final proof I needed that something’s wrong with him. Dean would _never_ admit such a thing to Sam. His little brother, the guy he’d spent his life protecting? What would possess him to demean himself like that? To show him how twisted he got? The fact he _did_ tell him just proves he’s seeking something from Sam. Affirmation. Forgiveness. Understanding. I dunno, maybe even faith. And Sam can’t give him any of that, because it’s not his place to. Sam can only think of Lilith these days (and good luck to him!) but he’s not the shoulder to lean on Dean needs right now.

Which leaves Castiel.

The angel fucking knows it, too. It’s no coincidence that he turns up the next night. Dean’s still thinking about the two feral kids locked up in that creepy old house and how they became animals over the years, clearly putting himself in their place and agonizing over it, despite the fact he and Sam managed to save that nice family from them and, really, that’s a happy ending and he should be relieved. Castiel waits until Sam’s fast asleep at the motel and Dean’s gone for a drive, alone, as he sometimes does when he can’t sleep, and he pops into existence as Dean’s leaning on the hood of the Impala with a forgotten beer in his hand and the air frosty in his lungs.

“Dean,” Castiel says, and Dean sighs as he registers his presence. I study his expression as hard as I can; he’s angry. Good.

“Great,” he snaps, and the growl in his voice is really rather disturbing. “When are you going to get it through your thick skull that I want nothing to do with you sonsofbitches?”

“You’re not like them, Dean.”

“Like who?”

Castiel takes a step closer to him. I want to put myself between them but I know it’ll do no good. I want this road to be busier, the streetlamps brighter, the stars to shine more – anything to make this situation less private. Instead all that happens is Castiel comes to stand far too close to Dean, making him back up a little with a frown marking his forehead. Dean throws his beer bottle to the floor and sniffs, trying to look casual, but I can see he’s intimidated. Jesus, even I can be intimidated by the angel – I can sense the power radiating out from his human host, trying to find a way out of his eyes and ears and mouth and nose, anxious to resume its angelic form. I can even, sometimes, hear the wings rustling and I’m sure Dean can’t. This creature’s so much more than its earthly form, and yet it’s bound to it by magic stronger than any I know. It’s humbling. It really is.

At times, I’m glad he can’t see me.

“Those poor wretches in the house,” Castiel says smoothly. “Their fate was determined long before they were old enough to know better. As was yours, in Hell. Everybody breaks, Dean. Some do so after a day. Others last centuries. You shouldn’t feel ashamed.”

“What do you know about Hell?” Dean grunts. “You just snuck in, grabbed me by the arm and dumped me in my coffin. You hardly stayed around to watch the fun first, did you? Which reminds me, thanks a lot for the handprint. It’s a real buzzkill when I’m with a chick. Ever tried to explain away something like that?”

“I didn’t just...” Castiel stops, letting out a sigh. He looks away, straight through me at the road, and despite my fear of him I find myself wishing for the hundredth time that he could see me, just so that I had someone to talk to.

“So why are you here?” Dean asks, when it becomes clear that Castiel isn’t going to speak again. “A little angelic pep-talk, is that it? Want to remind me God has plans for me and that I shouldn’t wallow in my misery?”

Castiel looks at him again, and I recognize the gleam in his eyes. That’s how he looks at Dean while he sleeps. I wonder if Dean will even notice. “I’m sorry you’re miserable,” says the angel, and it’s as though he’s poured all the sincerity in his – well, someone else’s – body into the words. “It was not my... _our_ intention to make you suffer. I wish I could help carry your burdens.”

Dean’s expression doesn’t change. “Yeah,” he says sarcastically. “That means a lot, comin’ from you.” It’s clear that it doesn’t, really. For a small moment I wonder if Dean’s hostility will ever die down. Perhaps Castiel will give up and leave him. I indulge the fantasy for as long as I can, but the angel doesn’t seem to want to help me with it.

“Please, Dean,” he snaps, sounding annoyed. “I’m trying. This is new to me, all of it. I don’t understand what you’re going through, but I’m _trying_ to. Stop fighting me.”

I expect Dean to laugh, to make some quip about Castiel being the Tin Man and wanting to know what it’s like to have a heart or something similar, but instead Dean simply stares at him and then lets out a breath. “I enjoyed it, Cas,” he says, his words coming out in a rush. “I told Sam, but I don’t think he knew what to think, because how could he? I enjoyed torturing those souls because they were so weak, and I was so strong, and it felt so good to share the pain. You wonder why I fight you? It’s because you say God has work for me, but why the fuck would He want me to do anything except crawl under a rock and die? I don’t deserve this chance. Not for me, not for Sam, not for the world. It’s wrong, Cas. There are better people out there. I was finished, in Hell. You shouldn’t have bothered with me.”

I can’t believe he just said all that. Well, I can, because I’ve known what’s been going on under the surface with him for all these months. What I can’t believe is that he told Castiel. He really did. It’s like a nightmare is coming to life right in front of my eyes. With every moment they spend together, I can feel my existence becoming more and more meaningless.

I can’t help it; I let out a sob.

“You are important, Dean,” Castiel is saying. “You must leave behind the things you did and look to the future now. You aren’t the sum of those deeds, and you never will be.”

“I am,” Dean replies, and I’m devastated to hear tears in his voice. “I’m a bad thing, Cas, and I always will be.”

What happens next surprises us both, although Dean’s the one who gets the biggest shock. Castiel makes a soft noise in the back of his throat and then it’s as though he just _snaps_ , like I do when my elastic pulls me back. One moment he’s the stiff, somber angel he always is and the next he’s grabbing Dean by the neck and pulling him into the neediest fucking kiss I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s like he forgets he’s kissing something human, something that is soft and sensitive and can feel pain – instead he slams their lips together like Dean’s a wall, breathing out through his nose and gulping in a breath through his mouth as though he’s sucking all the air out of Dean’s lungs.

I stare in amazement as he forces himself onto him, so desperate for the touch that he doesn’t stop for a second to think about what Dean’s feeling, and then I start to wonder why Dean isn’t fighting him off. He makes a small sound in his throat – oddly enough, one very similar to the sound the angel just made – but he doesn’t struggle, doesn’t do anything, until the moment Castiel forces his lips open with his tongue and enters him.

And that’s the signal for Dean to shove him away as hard as he can, practically throwing Castiel to the asphalt in disgust.

“Jesus fucking _Christ!_ ” he spits, and I think, _That’s my Dean!_

Castiel is breathing heavily, gazing up at him with a dazed expression. I suddenly realize that he hadn’t planned this, not at all, and he’s as stunned by his behavior as Dean is. He doesn’t speak as Dean glowers at him magnificently before climbing into the car and flooring the accelerator as hard as he can.

As the vehicle moves away I turn to wag a finger at the angel. “He’s mine,” I tell him, victoriously. “You see that? You see how he reacted? He doesn’t want you!”

But just as I feel the bonds about me tightening as Dean draws further away, Castiel drops his head in his hands and lets out a thoroughly un-angelic swear word, his voice filled with despair, and I feel a moment’s unwelcome sympathy before I’m _snapped_ back into the car and find myself staring at Dean’s chalk-white face.

“Surprise!” I say weakly. “He’s in love with you. Who knew? Well, other than me, of course.”

~ ~ ~

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

~ ~ ~ 

Sam’s snoring when Dean gets back to the motel. Dean stands over him for a while, clenching and unclenching his fists, and I wonder what he’s going to do. Right now I really don’t have a clue what he’s thinking. He’s just been sexually attacked by the one creature he thought was an agent of All That Is Good, a male one at that, and if that’s not an earth-shattering experience, I don’t know what is. Dean’s not homophobic, I know he isn’t, because for all his bluster and awkwardness whenever someone thinks he and Sam are gay (which happens a lot, you know, when two young, hot guys turn up at a motel and ask for one room) he never really disses gays or gets angry when people assume he is. He just accepts it as another facet of humanity, and boy, do I love him for that. 

(Plus I know he’s not homophobic because he spends a lot of time watching lesbian porn. Although I think that’s a given with a lot of men, isn’t it? That’s a purely 20th and 21st century thing, by the way. In my time that would never have happened. Then again, if they’d had the internet in my time maybe it would. That shit brings out the worst in people, although I’m probably only saying that because I have to watch other people surf all the time and I’ve never been able to just sit down and have a Google frenzy myself. Always the backseat driver, that’s me.)

I’m happy, actually, even as I watch him struggle to come to terms with what just happened, because I didn’t go all poltergeisty when Castiel kissed him. If I was jealous and upset then I would’ve, I dunno, smashed the headlights on the Impala or something, but I didn’t. My involuntary reaction that time at Bobby’s seems to have come to nothing. Hell, if I don’t react when the man I love face-sucks another man, I must be able to control it, right? 

Although maybe it was simply the fact that Dean didn’t enjoy it. Maybe if Dean had kissed Castiel back...

I don’t even wanna think about that. Instead I study him, and try to figure out what he’s going to do.

He locks himself in the bathroom. He rips off his clothes and gets in the shower. No biggie, I hear you say – so what if it’s 3.30am and he had a shower a few hours ago? So what if he’s risking waking up his brother? It was cold outside, and he wants to warm up!

Yeah. Right. And the fact he pulls down his jeans to reveal a big, shiny boner has nothing to do with it. 

Holy shit, he did like the kiss after all. Holy. Motherfucking. Shit. I don’t believe it. I stare at him – at _it_ – aghast until he climbs under the shower, and the whole time I’m thinking, _This isn’t happening, this isn’t happening, he’s not about to whack off over Castiel, he’s not, it can’t be happening even though I knew it would, this isn’t happening._ And then I notice that the room’s not getting steamy and he gasps and curses as the water hits him and thank God, that shower is as cold as Lake Ontario on Midwinter’s Day. He’s trying to cool off – never mind the fact he could get fucking hypothermia in the process – and he’s as horrified that he’s turned on as I am.

“That’s right, Dean,” I soothe him, stepping under the shower myself. “Don’t get carried away.” I stand between the tiles and his body, fancying that his dick is digging into my hip even though it’s passing through me, and I wish I could remember what water feels like on skin because it’s been so long. Even though water and I have a difficult relationship, what with the drowning ‘n’ all, I still miss it.

“Fuck this,” Dean says, he picks up the showerhead and holds it over his groin, shuddering and gritting his teeth. It seems to have the desired effect because his penis starts thinking _screw this mallarkey_ and begins to cower. “Dammit,” Dean says, a shiver in his voice. He’s freezing his nuts off and it must be horrible to do this, to aim that water right at his cock like he’s punishing it, but all I can think is that I’m oh-so-happy that he’s this determined not to let Castiel get under his skin, I could sing.

“You don’t love him, Dean,” I implore him. “I know you and him have got some weird bond thing going on, and I saw you both in Hell so I know how powerful it is, but I want you to keep fighting it. He might love you but you don’t love him. And God, I’m so selfish saying that, aren’t I? How can I want you to be alone, like me, when you have someone all ready and waiting for you? I can’t help it, Dean, I really can’t, it’s because I’m jealous and I shouldn’t be saying all this, but I can’t help what I’m feeling...” 

I’m blabbering now. Like an idiot. He’s looking down at his dick like it’s an imposter and I’m whining about how mean I am. I decide to leave and I float into the other room, where Sam’s lying on his back and staring at the moonlit ceiling and obviously wondering why his brother’s having a shower in the middle of the fuckin’ night.

“Castiel tongue-raped him,” I announce imperiously. “It’s a whole world of weird.”

Sam blinks and frowns, but it’s because he’s worried about Dean and not because he hears me. I gaze at him, still stunned at how huge he is these days, so different from the little kid whose face lit up when Bobby handed me over to him. I should’ve gone to John Winchester, but I’m glad Sam gave me to Dean. Of course I am. Despite all the heartache, I wouldn’t have missed this for the world.

I wait a little while, watching Sam’s eyes flicker and close and then open again, before I decide to rejoin Dean in the shower. Like I could ever get bored of seeing him naked. Not gonna happen. Never. He’s like a piece of art, a sculpture or something; the more you study him, the more you see. His muscle definition changes. His skin switches color from summer to winter. His hair gets longer and shorter – it’s not as long as I’d like, these days. Even his eyes change, which is crazy, but they do. And, okay, I’m not gonna be coy over this, but he has a lovely ass. I doubt you’ll ever see it, but trust me: it’s a booty of beauty.

The room’s starting to steam up, so Dean’s turned the water hot. I can’t know for sure, of course, being unable to sense temperatures, but I can tell the water’s probably _too_ hot now if the red color of his skin is anything to go by. He’s standing with his hands against the tiles, arms stiff and straight, with the water running down his back in torrents. His head is bowed and his eyes are closed. He looks... beautiful. I sigh, as much as a ghost _can_ fucking sigh, and slip into the shower with him.

“Dude. If you’re not out of here soon, Sam’s gonna come in and get you. He’s awake, you know. He’ll think you’ve slipped and fallen or something pathetic like that.”

Dean shakes his head, water dripping from his hair, and his shoulders shudder. I can’t see his face properly but I have a sudden, sinking feeling that he’s crying. “Dean?” I ask, nervously. “You okay?”

I look down, past his head, and _shit_. Yeah. He’s okay, alright. He’s only gone hard again, hasn’t he? That shake of the shoulders was _anger_. He’s furious with himself, and now I look at him I can see the line of tension in his jaw, and the way he’s breathing too hard, and the way his hands are so flat on the tiles I’m surprised they don’t shatter under his palms. 

“Oh no,” I moan. “Please, no.”

And then it happens. Just what I’ve been dreading. Dean seems to come to a decision; in a split second he straightens and grabs his dick, pulling at it hard as though he’s angry with it, which I suppose he is. He throws his head back so the water’s hitting his neck and he stares up at the ceiling with an expression that’s about as far from pleasure as it’s possible to get. He’s utterly and completely out of his depth and I utterly and completely understand how he feels. He’s helpless. He doesn’t want to be aroused, but he is, and he doesn’t understand how this has happened, and he’s wondering if he’s gay and he’s wondering if the angel did something to him to make him that way, but most of all he’s wondering _why he can’t stop himself_. 

All of this is going through his mind as I stare at him in horror, and the whole time his hand’s working against his shaft, water bouncing off his wrist as he moves and dripping off the head of his cock, which is now quite clearly having little happy angelic thoughts of its own. 

“Fuck him,” Dean mutters, quietly so that it can’t be heard over the running water. “ _Fuck him._ ” And with that he leans forward, placing one hand on the wall, and bends his body over so that his head falls through me. If I was solid, his lips would be somewhere between my nipples. 

The cruelty of this image, and the fact it will never actually happen for real, is not lost on me.

“Don’t do it, Dean,” I plead, lowering myself so I can look up at his face. His dick is next to my head – or what should be my head – and I don’t look at it because I don’t want to _see_ the physical evidence of his attraction to Castiel. I stare up into his eyes, desperate, searching for hatred or contempt or fear, but all there is is resignation. And then all there is is lust and he comes a moment later with a sound that’s more of a sob than a moan of ecstacy, and I have to move pretty damn sharpish to make sure that he doesn’t empty himself right through me and out the other side. (It’s not like I’d feel it or anything, of course, and it’s not like it hasn’t happened before – I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve hovered over his dick while he’s been playing with himself, pretending I was doing all the work... hey, a ghost’s gotta find something to pass the time, right? But this time it’s different. He just shot his load for Castiel, and I want nothing to do with it.)

He stays bent over, panting, and I move back and gaze at him as he struggles to regain control. Then he falls to his knees under the spray, whispers, “Jesus, Cas, what have you done to me?” and that’s all I can take.

I go _involuntary_ again, and the mirror above the basin shatters into a hundred pieces.

 

~ ~ ~

 

All things considered, it’s ironic that I’m the main topic of conversation the next day.

“I’m telling you, Sam, something hinky’s going on,” Dean says, squinting into the sunlight as he drives. “First that mug goes flying at Bobby’s and now this. I felt the temperature change in that bathroom – it was no accident. There was a spirit.”

“So, what, it’s following us around?”

Dean shrugs. “Seems like it to me. What have we picked up recently that could be haunted?”

Sam thinks, folding his arms. “I can’t think of anything. No new weaponry, no new kit... Hey, you bought those pants a few weeks back.”

“Yeah, cause that’s all I need. Haunted jeans. Guess I’m gonna have to salt my crotch.” Dean grins, shooting his brother a twinkly-eyed look, and I wonder how he can seem so cheerful after he broke my heart last night.

Sam sniffs. “Where did you go last night, anyway? I woke up and you were gone, and then you woke me up again when you were in the shower.”

Dean does look rattled then, but he hides it well. “Couldn’t sleep. Went for a drive.”

Sam looks down at his nails; it’s a gesture that’s a little too calculated to be casual. I’ve seen him do it a million times and I know Dean’s not fooled by it, either. “You seem to be doing that a lot lately. Were you drinking?”

“What’re you, the leader of the Temperance Movement?”

“Dean...”

“Sam, just let me drive, okay? Look, the sun’s out, it’s a glorious day and we’ve just had a tasty breakfast. Can’t that be enough for now?”

Sam opens his mouth to argue but stops himself. “Yours might’ve been tasty,” he says eventually, “but my pancakes tasted like rubber.” 

Dean smiles and begins to chide him for being a fussy eater, and I find myself pondering which brother’s doing the most lying these days. Sam didn’t go to sleep after Dean finally got to bed last night. He went outside and called Ruby. I followed him as far as I could and heard him talking about how he ‘won’t drink it’. 

_Yeah,_ I think. _You will. If it’s the only thing that’ll defeat Lilith, you will._

 

~ ~ ~

 

I know a Siren when I see one, and I saw one in Bedford, Iowa, long before the Winchesters had the faintest clue who it was. 

I also discovered something rather alarming: it seems I can smash kitchen utensils and bathroom mirrors with wild abandon when I think Dean’s in love with an angel, but I can’t do squat when he’s about to kill his brother. What the hell’s that about? Thank God Bobby showed up or Sam would be kindling by now. And Dean... Dean said some bad things, but Sam said worse, and no amount of wriggling’s gonna get either of them out of that situation.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen my boys so broken, and it’s horrible.

It’s like the world’s against us all, I think, as I watch them sleep that night. There’s so much weight on each of us. There’s me, with my endless existence alone and unloved, without a single soul on the planet knowing I’m here and nothing to look forward to except more unutterable loneliness. There’s Sam, trying to do the right thing and facing opposition from every direction, scared that his brother is weak and he’ll have to face off the apocalypse without him. And there’s Dean, who’s starting to shatter under all the pressure, knowing God’s got some heavenly mission for him and if he fails the world could perish. 

I send up a useless, probably unheard prayer of thanks to the Almighty that Dean doesn’t know he broke the first Seal down in Hell. 

I know he did because I heard Alastair and another demon talking while Dean was carving his second victim a new airhole to breathe through. I know what that kind of knowledge would do to him, especially now, when he doesn’t seem to have the respect of his own brother, and the agent of the Lord sent to help him has made him crazy. Poor Dean. Poor, helpless, innocent Dean.

I fancy that I’m smoothing the hair off his forehead as he sleeps. I fancy that I can climb under the sheets with him, that I can hold him as he shakes with his nightmares, that I can tell him everything will be okay. I wish and I wish and I wish, but my wishes never come true. 

It’s nights like these when I hate Thomas with all of my being. I nearly exposed him as a warlock and a fornicator, true. But I _didn’t_. He left me to the villagers and escaped scot-free while I held my tongue and ended up beaten and bloodied and drowned. He weaved a curse around his amulet and threw it into the pond, where it lay for five years before some children dredged it up, and for those five years I was stuck under the water with no idea what was happening or why I was still around. When I came to the surface, Thomas was no longer in the village. The village was almost empty, in fact, and my new companion took me away with him. I rode his neck for years before I understood. Thomas was punishing me for _his_ crimes.

I wonder if he’d had any idea I’d still be suffering two hundred years later? Or that I’d find myself tangled with two men and an angel trying to stop Satan walking free from Hell? Ah, fate. I’ve come a long way since my death, but I don’t have to like it.

The air in the room wobbles a little and then suddenly Castiel’s standing beside the bed directly opposite me, gazing down at Dean with what I can only assume is the same expression I would’ve had on my face just now if only I still had one. He seems... I don’t know, rumpled. Tired. Like he’s been fighting, I suppose. Or moping. I assume it’s the former, but who knows with an angel? As I watch his eyes settle on Dean’s face I feel a surprising surge of empathy for him – he’s suffering, just like I am, although obviously my predicament is worse than his. 

Although is it? I have no idea what the rules are in Heaven when it comes to angels lusting over humans. Maybe he got in serious trouble for kissing Dean the other night. Maybe he’s been reprimanded, or demoted, or he’s been told he can never see him again and he’s breaking the rules right now. And if not, there are other problems to consider. I have no idea what the morality issues are with the guy he’s riding – does he know that the angel inside him is hot for human males? How does he feel about that? 

I _do_ know that when Dean and Castiel first laid eyes on each other in Hell, Castiel was there as himself, as an angel, all glowy and glorious and impressive, and Dean still fell for him, blue eyes and messy hair and gravelly voice be damned. This goes beyond flesh. Which, now I think of it, upsets me all the more, because I have no flesh either, and yet Dean doesn’t love _me_.

“Haven’t you done enough?” I spit, as Castiel sighs. “Why can’t you leave him alone? Why can’t you leave him to me?”

The angel doesn’t respond. This makes me angry. “You’ve got a war to fight, dammit!” I yell. “Why are you hanging around him when you should be kicking demon ass? Why can’t _you_ destroy Lilith? Why do you need Dean? Why are you standing back and letting Sam contemplate drinking Ruby’s blood? Either you’re a coward or you’re too weak and you like to let humans do your dirty work for you. Either way, Dean is going to get hurt here, _Cas_. I know you love him. You have to stop it!”

But Castiel can’t hear me, and I scream as loudly as I can in frustration. He doesn’t bat an eyelid. But he does bend down and kiss Dean gently on the forehead, and apparently that’s all it takes for me to go all poltergeist on his ass.

A wind sweeps around the room, rustling the pages of the books Sam left on the table and making the curtains flap against the windows. Castiel’s coat blows open and he straightens, staring around him in surprise, as his tie is flung over his shoulder by my ire. The painting on the wall behind him swings from side to side but doesn’t fall. The bathroom door slides open with a tiny creak, but the boys don’t stir at the sound as Castiel looks across at it with a frown.

“I know you’re here,” he says quietly. “Show yourself.”

I freeze. The wind stops.

Castiel’s eyes are scanning the room from side to side. He looks... different, now. Dangerous. If I could swallow in fear, I would.

“You will not hurt them,” he says. “If you do, the wrath of the angels will fall upon you, and you will be flung into Hell for all of eternity to suffer.”

“I don’t WANT to hurt them!” I yell without thinking. “I love them! Damn you, you stupid fucking angel, I love them both! They’re all I have and you’re trying to take them away from me! You’re trying to take _Dean_ away from me!”

Castiel doesn’t hear me. He keeps looking around, searching and frowning, and he stays like that for hours, right up until Sam stirs at the first signs of daylight. Then he disappears and I scream again, as loudly as I can.

“Dean,” Sam grunts, leaning across the gap between the beds to poke him on the shoulder. “Time to get up. We’ve got a long drive today.”

“Mmph,” Dean replies, burrowing deeper into his pillow. “It’s so quiet. Can we just stay here?”

I stop screaming and go outside, because if I don’t there’ll be one less mirror in Bedford, Iowa for the maid to clean today.

 

~ ~ ~

 

The next job the boys work on is, ironically enough, a poltergeist. It’s been terrorizing an antiques store in North Platte, Nebraska, and the owner contacted Bobby for help after losing a shitload of valuable stock – the spirit has a thing for vases, apparently. The boys walk into the store, which has its windows boarded up and is lit by emergency lighting, and their EMF meter goes crazy. 

“It’s been driving me batshit for a month now,” the store manager pipes up behind them. He’s a nervous little man named Dave, and I irrationally hate him because he’s racist. Well, poltergeist-ish. Whatever. I know it’s daft, because Sam and Dean hate poltergeists too, but I know they understand a few more things than Dave does, such as how spirits aren’t always evil. 

“We believe you,” Sam says mildly, shutting down the EMF meter. “Your store is full of paranormal energy. We’ll exorcise it for you, but you’d better go in case the spirit gets angry and tries to fight back.”

Dave’s out the door so fast it makes me laugh. Ah, civilians. Always so scared of all things supernatural.

The brothers set to work making those gross little bags that’ll repel the poltergeist. I watch them, my mind racing, wondering if the bags will make me feel strange or sick because I’m almost a poltergeist, too, but nothing happens. You’d think with the salt and the spells and shit the boys use every day, I’d be in constant pain, but I’m not. I can dodge salt rounds, float over salt lines, and spells never seem strong enough to interfere with my own predicament. I guess it’s a perk of the curse or something.

“There,” Dean announces, closing the tie on the bag he’s just filled. “This should make for one panicky poltergeist.”

It occurs to me then that they hadn’t said a word to each other since Dave left. _Boys._ Still sulking over the things the Siren’s spell made them say. Still hurt, and unhappy. I hate this, I really do.

A vase suddenly topples from a shelf behind Sam, who turns to look, then jumps to his feet and picks up his own bags. They need to go inside the building, tucked away in its corners, and I have a feeling the poltergeist is going to try to stop it from happening. I faintly wonder if I can distract it, but I’ve never been able to interact with other spirits before so I already know it’s a lost cause. “Watch yourself,” Sam warns his brother. “You take that side of the building and I’ll take this.”

They split up. I should go with Dean, but I stop and stare at the smashed vase instead, because I can sense something weird about it. No, not the vase... there’s something beside it, a disturbance, an energy. I watch in fascination as _feet_ start to materialize on the floor. I stare at them for a few moments and my gaze travels upwards: there’s an old man standing there, wringing his hands, glancing around him with wide eyes. 

“No, no, no,” he moans, his voice wispy, like wind through grass. “They can’t do this, they can’t!”

He goes to follow Sam and I do the first thing I can think of. “Hello,” I say, and to my absolute amazement the man jumps before turning to look at me.

“What the... who are you?” 

_Fuck, someone can see me. Oh my God. It’s been so long!_

“I’m with them,” I say, feeling the elastic sensation starting to tickle me as Dean moves further away and I’m drawn to him. “They’re going to exorcise you, but please don’t be scared. You’ve not hurt anybody, so I doubt you’ll go to Hell once they’re done.”

“There’s... there’s really a Hell?” the man stammers. Bless him, he looks like someone’s grandpa; someone’s freaked-out, shit-scared grandpa. 

“Yes,” I answer, wondering if I’m being as soothing as I thought I was. “There’s a Heaven too, and angels who’ll look after you. How long have you been a poltergeist?”

“A... a what? Who are you?”

Dean’s gone too far from me now, and I’m fighting to stay in place. “I’m a spirit, like you,” I reveal. “You didn’t know that you’re a ghost? Really?”

“This was my store,” the old man sobs. “I sold children’s toys and lollipops for so many years. So many years... and then that horrible man arrived and ripped out everything, brought in all these nasty, musty crap, and he says terrible things about the customers behind their backs and fleeces them and lies and cheats... I hate him. He doesn’t deserve to be here. He sullies this place.”

“You have to move on,” I tell him urgently; the feeling is getting unbearable. “You have to let him do what he wants. You died, Sir, and you’re not alive to care any...”

_SNAP!_ And now I’m watching Dean place the bag in the corner of the cellar, and then there’s a burst of magical light and a rush of wind, and I can feel that the old man is gone.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper after my new, albeit brief, comrade. “I hope you found Heaven.” 

I wonder what Heaven is like. I wonder if I’ll ever get to see it.

Dean heads back upstairs. I follow, as always, but I feel sad despite the fact I’ve just had my first conversation in two centuries. The poor guy had no idea he was a ghost. All he cared about was his shop. I wonder if I’ll end up like that; if I’ll be doomed to roam the Earth whining and moping about Dean Winchester and his angel, unable to contemplate anything else in the world except my own pain. It’s depressing. 

Dammit. I’ve never felt so miserable as I do right now. The Winchesters are in pain and I’m in pain. We’re in some weird, symbiotic relationship, and it _hurts_.

“I need to pick something up,” Sam tells his brother as they meet again inside the store. “There’s a mall round the corner from here. You go on ahead and I’ll meet you back at the motel.”

Dean sighs. He’s thinking, _Yeah, yeah, course you do. You don’t want to call Ruby at all._ But he doesn’t say it; instead he says, “Sure. I’ll see you later. Guess I’ll sweep up this vase. Wonder if Dave’s got any superglue? Reckon it’ll still be worth something?”

Sam leaves. Dean sighs and stares down at the broken ceramic pieces, but he’s not seeing them. His shoulders are slumped and he looks as broken as the vase does. I fight the urge to place an arm around his shoulders, even though I have no arm to place there anyway.

“I’m sorry, Dean.”

And _Jesus_ , that makes both of us jump. 

Dean spins round and takes a step backwards, his eyes wide, holding out his hand in warning. “Don’t you dare come near me,” he tells the angel, his voice filled with anger. “I’ve had it with your mind games.”

Castiel stays where he is. His eyes are so empty, I could cry. He looks as depressed as I feel. When did I start feeling sympathy for him? When did I start to understand him?

“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” he says.

Dean snorts. “‘Uncomfortable’? Are you kiddin’ me? What the hell were you expecting me to feel? You’re an _angel_ , Cas, and I’m human! And you’re a guy! I like women, okay? I don’t know what the current state of affairs is up in Heaven, dude, but I’m pretty sure being gay isn’t on the list of Ten Things God Likes Right Now.”

Castiel’s mouth twitches into a sad smile. “God is love, Dean. He doesn’t care who feels it. As long as there is love in the universe, it is good.”

“...L-love? Are you shitting me?” Dean is aghast. He can barely speak. I look from him to Castiel, wondering when it’s going to happen; when Dean’s going to put it all together and know he feels the same way. I want to smack him, but mainly I want to smack Castiel. I’m feeling less jealous, true, but I’m still unhappy he’s here.

The angel takes a step forward and it looks as though it takes all the energy Dean possesses not to move backwards. “Dean, you and I...” Castiel stops, licking his lips. He looks awkward, and the uncertain look on his face verges on comical. I laugh, but it’s a hollow sound that nobody hears. “We are meant to be together, Dean,” the angel continues, and I hear Dean draw in his breath sharply. “It wasn’t something I was expecting. It wasn’t something I even dreamed could happen. I saw you in Hell, and that was it – you were the one. You can’t remember, but you feel the same way.”

“You’re insane,” Dean snaps. “You are high-grade, super-duper, one hundred per cent proof _insane_. What’re you, some kind of stalker? How do I even know anything you’ve told me is true? You’re just trying to get into my pants!”

“I’m not trying to get into your pants,” Castiel says firmly and without emotion. I wonder if he’s aware of how funny those words sound, falling from an angel’s lips. “This is more than physical attraction. We’re soulmates, Dean. Have you any idea how rare it is for an angel and a human to discover such a thing? How many eons have passed since it last happened? It’s a miracle.”

“You threatened to throw me back into Hell!” Dean shouts, his hands balling into fists. “Twice! If that’s how you treat your _soulmate_ , I’d hate to see how you treat your enemies!”

Castiel looks stricken. “I had my orders,” he explains, his voice shaking a little. “Above all else, I am a soldier, and I must obey. You know that. Anna showed you what will happen if I don’t. My Father asks for sacrifices all the time, Dean, and they must be given. And you have no idea how difficult it was for me to...”

“Bull!” Dean interrupts. “You’re a liar, Cas. You’ve been playing me and Sam from the start, and I hate you for this. I hate you for doing this to me. I kept telling you that you shoulda left me in Hell. ‘God’s plan’, my ass! You only pulled me out so I could become your little human sex toy! It makes me sick just looking at you!”

“ _Damn it, Dean!_ ” 

And fuck, the whole building shakes when he shouts that. Dust falls from the ceiling, antique jars and vases wobble on shelves and a few paintings jump off their nails and fall to the floor. The dim emergency lights fizz and crackle above us and the air suddenly fills with electricity. 

Dean’s face doesn’t even twitch. He’s not scared. I suddenly love him so hard I want to crush him in a hug so fierce it’ll turn him into a diamond in my arms.

“Why won’t you listen to me?” Castiel cries, and there’s more emotion in his voice than I’ve ever heard. “I’m trying to tell you that this is a good thing, and you’re making it sound sordid and wrong! Why can’t you just accept that someone loves you? Why must you fight everything I say?”

“Because I’m sick and tired of being played with,” Dean yells, and he punches Castiel as hard as he can on the jaw.

I shriek, because I didn’t see it coming, and Castiel staggers backwards a few steps but he doesn’t raise his hand to his face. Instead he straightens and holds himself still, blood trickling from his lip, a look of abject misery warring with anger in his eyes.

“Stay the fuck away from me!” Dean orders him, cradling his fist in pain, and pushes the angel to one side as he marches out the door. 

“Dean!” Castiel calls desperately, whirling to shout after him. “ _Dean!_ ”

I stay with him after the shop door slams. The bell over it tinkles merrily, sounding so jolly it’s like it’s mocking what just happened. I wait for the amulet to drag me back to it as Dean stalks off to the car, but it doesn’t, which means he’s not moving further away. He’s standing in the street outside the store, and I have no idea why.

Castiel starts breathing heavily, like he’s swallowing down some huge emotion, and his head bows. He moans, just a little, and fuck me, do I know how he feels.

“Love hurts, doesn’t it?” I say gently. “And Dean can hurt you without even knowing you exist, too. I’m not sure which is worse.”

The bell tinkles again and Castiel’s head snaps up. Dean closes the door behind him and stares across at the angel, his face so pale I can see every freckle standing out on his skin.

“Please,” Castiel begs, taking a deep breath. 

Dean looks at the floor. He looks at the ceiling. He looks at the walls. And then he marches across the room and shoves Castiel in the chest, throwing him against a cabinet which rattles alarmingly on its ancient wooden feet. All the vases lined up along its top fall to the floor, shattering on the flagstones with an almighty racket that echoes around the store. 

“I hate you,” Dean growls, standing so close to Castiel’s face that they’re almost touching noses. 

And then he kisses him. Hard. As hard as Castiel kissed him that time, like he’s nothing more than something for Dean to jam his face against. Castiel’s eyes widen in shock and he raises both his hands in the air but doesn’t seem to know what to do with them. Dean places his own hands on the angel’s cheeks, holding him in place, pressing so hard I can only imagine it must hurt, and his body falls until it’s lined up against Castiel’s, groin to groin. 

He kisses him. He kisses him, and I want to tear out my own eyes so I don’t have to watch, but I don’t have any to tear out. It’s funny, though, because I also don’t have a heart, and that’s being torn out of me for sure.

Castiel looks as though he’s struggling to break away, like he wants to say something, but after a few seconds he gives up. His hands finally fall on Dean’s back and he pulls him close, one palm falling to his ass, and Dean jerks away from him at the touch as though he’s gone too far. He releases his mouth and steps back, panting, staring at Castiel through narrowed eyes.

“Dean,” Castiel gasps. “This is...”

But then Dean shoves him again, so hard that the wood splinters against Castiel’s back. The angel hisses in a breath – in surprise, not shock, because he doesn’t seem to feel pain – and then Dean grabs him by the lapels of his coat and drags him towards a shelving unit stacked with everything from china plates to ceramic figures. They all go _smash_ as Castiel hits the unit, flying left, right and center as Dean turns the angel round to face him and starts tearing off his coat as though if he doesn’t get it off soon he’ll explode. Castiel is clearly out of his depth; he’s blinking at Dean in stunned amazement, staring down at Dean’s hands as they yank on his tie and pull it from his neck, and then Dean is kissing him again and more statues hit the ground around them as Castiel is thrown back against the unit with a soft groan of shock.

I’m yelling now, unable to believe what I’m seeing, and there’s utter nonsense flying from my lips but I don’t care. An ugly vase across the store flies from its shelf and smashes by the doorway; that was me, _I did that,_ but the men don’t notice. It happens again when a chandelier starts to swing above their heads, but they’re so wrapped up in each other they probably wouldn’t realize it if I brought the whole store down around their ears.

Dean releases Castiel’s mouth and rips open his shirt, buttons pinging off and bouncing on the stone floor like Tic-Tacs. Castiel seems to be recovering from the shock now, getting his mojo back, and he pushes Dean away from him so he can stand up properly. Dean’s panting really, really hard, and he’s got this wild look in his eyes I’ve never seen before, not even in Hell. I glance down and see the bulge in his crotch and I realize that the sweet Dean Winchester who has sex with princesses isn’t here right now. This is another Dean entirely. This is the Dean Winchester who is exorcising his fury at the universe through sex. This is the Dean Winchester who’s just found himself turned on by a man and is going to treat him as harshly as he can because he still can’t believe it. He doesn’t have to be gentle any more; he can do what the fuck he wants. This isn’t _sweet_. This is _dangerous._

There’s an answering look in Castiel’s eyes, anger and lust and power all mingled together, and I just have time to offer up a quick prayer for Castiel to remember that Dean’s breakable before all hell breaks loose. 

Castiel shoves Dean this time, flinging him against a bookcase with a grunt of pain. Hardbacks rain down around him, hitting the floor with heavy flumps, and my powers are now strong enough to ruffle their pages just by looking at them. Again, nobody notices. Castiel is on Dean in a heartbeat, practically ripping the jacket from his back and then tearing his t-shirt right down the front to expose his chest– and me. The amulet. Castiel’s hand almost brushes me and I wonder if he’ll ever touch it and feel my presence.

“Is that it, Cas?” Dean taunts him, his voice low and filled with desire. “That all you got? A bit of clothes-ripping? Some powerful angel you are.”

And Castiel _growls_ , like a fucking tiger or something, and dead or not I still moan because holy shit, that’s a good noise. Dean’s eyes widen as he hears it, clearly even more affected by it than I am, and then Castiel’s grabbed him by the neck and is ramming him against a column in the middle of the store so hard that the pictures hanging up and down its length smash on the floor.

It’s a good job the poltergeist told me Dave the store owner was a nasty man. I’d be feeling a bit sorry for him and all his smashed stock otherwise.

Dean laughs as Castiel’s hand closes around his throat. He laughs, and grabs him by the hair and pulls him into a kiss, and they stand like that for what seems like forever, just kissing, tongues slipping in and out of each other’s mouths and their lips making obscene noises as they both try to breathe. They stand there just long enough for Castiel to relax – I see his shoulders slump and his forehead smooth out – and then Dean slips sideways and out of his grip, pushing him into another bookcase and laughing when it topples sideways, shelves spilling everywhere as Castiel hits the floor.

I don’t know this Dean _at all_. He’s fucking crazy. I’m starting to feel scared.

Castiel seems rattled, too, climbing to his feet and taking a deep breath. It’s weird seeing him without his coat and jacket. His shirt’s hanging open and his face is flushed. “Dean,” he says, “I’m not sure what you’re...”

But Dean cuts him off again, lurching forward and tugging the remains of his shirt away, then grabbing his belt and unbuckling it. His eyes are like ice, hard and determined. It’s the same look he used to get when he was torturing people, and it’s horrible. But Castiel seems unaffected by the sight; I can see he’s hard now, too, and whatever he was about to say evaporates as Dean’s hand falls on his crotch and squeezes.

“Hallelujah,” Dean murmurs in Castiel’s ear. “Hall-e-fuckin’-lujah.”

Castiel growls again, and his eyes flutter closed as Dean’s fingers explore his erection through the fabric. And then something so unexpected happens that I nearly scream in terror: wings unfurl from his back, enormous, powerful, unbelievable _wings_ , brown like a hawk’s, feathers tipped in black and the ends jagged-sharp. They’re almost too much to take in – I stare and stare but they’re still there, they’re real, and as I watch they move up and down as though Castiel wants to take off but is too confined by the room. Objects around him start to quake, affected by the change in airflow as he flaps, but _somehow Dean doesn’t notice_.

“Can’t you see them?” I yell at him, awed. “Dean! Look! Can’t you see them?”

But he can’t. He’s licking Castiel’s neck – no, wait, he’s _biting_ it – and he’s completely oblivious. The wings aren’t on his plane of existence, I realize. They’re on mine.

Dean nips at Castiel’s skin, fingers scratching a red line down his chest, and I’m suddenly on tenterhooks, wondering what the hell is going to happen next because this is so out of my realm of experience I really don’t have a clue. Castiel’s still got his eyes closed and his skin’s bathed in sweat; he looks blissed out, as though finally being able to release his wings was the final thing he had to do before he could let himself go. Maybe it was. I watch Dean lick his way around his jawline, and then down his chest, pausing to kiss the fingernail marks he just left there, and then he straightens and pulls Castiel across the room, heading for a flowery, chintzy sofa in one corner. 

At least they’re not gonna have sex on the floor. Flagstones wouldn’t be very comfortable. I may have been dead for two centuries, but I still think practically about such things.

I thought all the shoving was over, but it’s not. Dean pushes Castiel towards the sofa and he slumps into it so hard that it goes up on its back legs, almost toppling over. Dean’s on his lap a second later, sliding against him seductively and pulling at his own belt. Castiel helps him undo it, his wings hanging over the back of the sofa like drapes, and I find myself wishing once more that Dean could see them. They’re stunning – so perfect and _strong_ , symmetry in feathered form. I’m strangely pleased they’re not angel-white or gold or something; they look like the wings of a real bird, a predator, a hunter, and that’s exactly how they _should_ look. As I stare Castiel flaps them and the sound of the air gliding over the feathers is intoxicating.

Dean’s undoing the buttons on his jeans with one hand and holding Castiel’s face still with the other as he kisses him. There’s such passion in it, all of a sudden; it would take my breath away if it could. I get the sense that whatever issues Dean was working through a few minutes ago have been shoved aside now. He’s got hot, willing flesh underneath him and he wants to fuck – if that’s not the antidote to misery, I don’t know what is. 

Castiel’s unzipping himself, too, and I think they’re both gonna have to stand up to remove their pants, but Dean has something else in mind. He gets to his feet, bends and lifts the sofa so that it falls backwards, spilling Castiel onto the floor like he’s so much baggage, and the sight of him sprawling makes me giggle. I sound a little hysterical, actually. Dean climbs out of his clothes, steps over the upturned sofa, bends down and pulls off Castiel’s pants aggressively; his shoes and socks are whipped off next. Then the angel’s naked, they’re both naked, and they pause while they register both that fact and the knowledge of what they’re about to do next.

I guess flagstones aren’t that uncomfortable if there’s a bed of feathers between you and them. Castiel’s lying on his back, wings folded beneath him, and he looks perfectly cozy. The tips go down to the backs of his knees and he’s idly stroking one wing by his waist as Dean gazes down at him, not even seeing them. Dean’s really fucking hard – his dick is standing upright, raring to go, and the angel’s isn’t that far off either. He’s got a good body, actually; compact and defined, though nowhere near as nice as Dean’s. I know it’s stronger than it looks, too – hell, the scratches Dean just left on Castiel’s skin have already gone. Dean, meanwhile, is still bruised from the fight with his brother in front of the Siren. Castiel notices, reaching up a hand and pulling Dean downwards, running fingers along a line of bruises along his side with a concerned expression.

“Yeah, like you care,” Dean hisses softly.

Castiel flinches. “I care, Dean,” he says. “I think I care about you more than you care about yourself.”

Dean studies him, looking into his eyes, and I can’t quite see what he’s seeing because his head’s in the way, but whatever it is it’s enough to make him drop his head and kiss Castiel yet again, only this time it’s softer, more caring. He eases himself down to lie on top of him, bare flesh on bare flesh, and he lowers a hand down to stroke himself before taking Castiel’s penis in it and closing his fist around the shaft. 

And there it is. For the very first time, Dean’s putting the angel before himself. He’s thinking of him as an equal, as a _lover_ , as someone he wants to give pleasure to. It’s the final straw, the thing that’s been missing from their relationship so far.

Dean’s in love with Castiel, and he still doesn’t know I’m here.

I howl. I can’t stop myself. I howl and wail and scream, wishing I could cry, wishing I could tear my hair out with grief, as I watch Dean gently move his fist _up-and-down_ , _up-and-down_ , and I see Castiel squirm underneath him, gulping in massive lungfuls of air as his virgin angel form can’t understand the feelings coursing through him. I watch as he starts to moan, saying Dean’s name over and over, swallowing hard and then cursing like he’s been doing it all his life. I listen to his juddering breaths, to the sound of Dean whispering in his ear, telling him all the things he’s going to do to him in the future, and _fuck_ since when was my Dean this dirty? _Is_ this Dean? I hardly know him, and yet he’s suddenly exactly the guy I want to be with – hard and dangerous and, holy living fuck, so sexy I can barely comprehend it.

The angel seems to be having problems comprehending it, too, as Dean’s hand moves faster and faster. He starts pumping his hips upwards as Dean sits back, straddling his thighs, and I wonder why he’s not playing with his own dick but I can only assume it’s because he’s saving himself. He certainly seems to be enjoying bringing Castiel off, though; he has a wolfish grin on his face and he’s staring at his hand intently as it works, watching his thumb sliding over the tip of the angel’s penis, admiring the way his fingers and palm are curling. I see a _what the hell, why not?_ look pass over his face and then he bends down and licks the head, drawing a groan of pleasure from his partner, and then he sits back and pumps him so hard Castiel arches off the feathers under his body and cries out in rapture.

When he comes, it’s messy, and goes on for far longer than Dean can ever manage, which I assume is because this body hasn’t had sex in a long, long time. I try not to think that this isn’t really Castiel’s body, but it’s difficult; I wonder if Dean is wondering, too, although he seems comfortable enough. There’s semen dripping from his stomach and he looks down at it contemplatively but makes no move to wipe it off, and I can’t help but think that this is the guy who’s never so much as kissed a man before in his life and yet he’s, uh, handling this really well. If you pardon the pun.

The angel’s eyes are closed and he’s panting, a frown making him look stern as he lies there. Dean stares at him, tilting his head to one side. “I take it you’ve not done that before,” he says.

Castiel doesn’t say anything, just shakes his head from side to side.

“It’s a day of firsts,” Dean tells him. “I’ve not done _this_ before, either.”

He climbs off Castiel’s legs and pushes them apart; the angel snaps his eyes open and lifts his head to watch. Dean gives his dick a few solid strokes to get it ready and then kneels between his partner’s legs as I watch in complete and utter amazement. How is he so calm? He’s about to fuck a guy and he’s acting like it’s the most ordinary thing he’s ever done!

But I guess it’s just sex, after all, not painting the Sistine Chapel, and Dean knows how to put his dick in a hole because that’s where it’s designed to go, even if the hole in question is a little unconventional. He eases into Castiel with absolutely no preparation at all – and I know that’s not good, oh man, but I suppose the angel can feel no pain, so he’ll live. Dean grunts, probably because of the tightness, steadies himself with his hands on Castiel’s narrow hips, and then jerks hard against him. 

“This is... difficult,” he says, grimacing. 

Castiel wraps his legs around Dean’s back and angles himself a little, trying to make things easier, and suddenly Dean swears and his body shakes. “Oh man, that’s it,” he gasps, and Castiel smiles as Dean starts to fuck him, really hard, harder than I think I’d like if it was me. And holy shit, I can barely believe this is the same guy who’ll usually fuck a woman six ways to Sunday but do it so gently it’s like she’s made of glass or something. This man is some kind of other-Dean, and I’m starting to wonder if this is the _real_ Dean. Maybe I’ve spent the last few years with a prototype and this is Dean 2.0. This is in-love-with-a-guy-Dean. This is learning-not-to-fight-it Dean. This is...

...But I can’t think any more because what’s going on between these two men is so mind-blowingly hot I think I’d have orgasmed by now if I still had a body. Jesus, Dean’s making these crazy little whimpering noises, determined and desperate and so unlike him, and Castiel’s just lying on the floor on those gorgeous wings and staring up at him stoically, his hands on Dean’s shoulders, and the look in his eyes is so – God, I can’t even describe it. He looks like all his Christmasses have come at once, which I guess means even more for an angel, what with Christmas being about Jesus ‘n’ all. Every now and then his expression changes as Dean moves inside him and he gasps, his eyes fluttering, and then he’ll go back to staring as though he’s scared Dean will just disappear if he looks away.

And fuck, Dean’s so vocal – he’s never like this normally. He’ll make all the noises a girl wants to hear but I’ve always been able to tell that they’re for her, not him. When he jerks off he barely makes a sound, which I guess comes from having to share a room with your brother all your life (Sam, meanwhile... no, I won’t go into that, because you really don’t want to know). But for a guy who barely even moans when he comes, he’s certainly doing a lot of it now. And he’s not just moaning, either; he’s cussing, and calling Castiel every name under the sun (not all of them flattering, much to my delight), and as I watch that pretty ass of his move up and down I think that the reason he’s so far gone is because Castiel is perfect for him. He really is. This must feel really good, so good Dean can barely handle it, and that’s why he’s losing his mind.

God fucking dammit.

They look good together, though. If I leave aside my jealousy, even I have to admit they seem well-matched. They’re both so handsome, so vulnerable in their own ways, and I can see the hunger in Castiel’s eyes even as I see it in Dean’s, and I remember how they looked at each other in Hell and it’s almost here in front of me. Almost.

“I’ve lost you, Dean,” I sigh. “I never had you, but I lost you anyway.”

Castiel blinks. He turns his head and looks at the spot where I’m standing, puzzled. I have just enough time to think _did he just hear me?_ before Dean’s body tenses like a bow and he flings his head back, panting like he’s going to pass out or something, and he thrusts inside Castiel so hard that the angel cries out, although it doesn’t sound as though he’s in pain. And then Dean’s coming, I can tell from the way he shakes, and he’s gasping hoarsely and groaning like some kind of animal as Castiel grabs him by the neck and pulls him down into a violent, unexpected kiss.

He’s never come like that before. I’m positive he hasn’t. 

_Dean 2.0._

It’s over then, and they’re just two guys lying on a cold flagstone floor with no clothes on and bodies bathed in sweat and semen. Castiel looks human and Dean looks... shocked. He lies on Castiel’s chest, hand spread out on his ribcage, and he pants and blinks moisture out of his eyes with a numb expression. He hasn’t just surprised me; he’s surprised himself. I get the feeling he had no idea sex could be this good. I’m not sure I knew, either.

“Dean,” Castiel says softly, lifting his head off the floor. “I don’t mean to alarm you, but we’re not alone.”

Dean’s on his feet a second later, pulling on his jeans as he stares around the store with wide eyes. Castiel huffs out a laugh at his feet and sits up. “It’s a spirit,” he tells him calmly. “I sensed it around you before.”

Dean clears his throat. “Right,” he mutters. “That makes sense. We’ve noticed a few freaky things going on recently.”

“It’s not very strong. I don’t think it can hurt you.”

“I would never hurt him,” I say firmly. “Hush your mouth.”

No one hears me. 

“I can’t sense it any more,” the angel says, wiping sweat off his forehead with the back of his wrist. “It’s faded.”

“Got its jollies watching us have sex, huh?” Dean says, and his voice is rueful. Castiel looks up at him sharply.

“Dean, I don’t want this to...”

“It’s alright, Cas. Don’t panic. I get it, you love me. End of.” 

Castiel sits quietly as Dean pulls on his shirt and jacket, though his t-shirt’s a tattered mess. He looks down at it, shoots a glance towards the ragged heap of Castiel’s clothing and nods at his companion. “Sorry about your shirt, by the way. Can you sew those buttons back on or do I buy you a new one? Or do you just magic them back?”

“This isn’t the end of it, Dean.”

“What, your shirt? It looked pretty ended to me.”

“Dean.”

He stops, takes a deep breath, and stares up at the ceiling. “Cas, I need time to deal here. I have no idea what just fuckin’ happened. That was... amazing, but it was scary, y’know? I kinda lost myself for a while there.”

“You’re not the only one.” Castiel sounds amused. It’s actually rather nice to hear him sound amused. I’m really warming to him, which is crazy considering everything. Maybe it’s because he’s sensed me twice now. _Third time lucky._

Dean sighs. “This is nuts. You know that, right?”

Castiel shrugs. “You think this is nuts? Have you _read_ the _Bible_? Noah managed to fit every animal in the world on one ship. If that’s not nuts, I don’t know what is.”

“Are you trying to crack a joke?”

“If you had to ask, I obviously didn’t succeed.”

“Guys, stop flirting,” I scold them. “You’re supposed to do that before sex, not after.”

“See you around, Cas,” Dean says after a long pause, and walks out the door. 

I watch Castiel for as long as I can, seeing him press fingers to his lips as though he’s reliving Dean’s kiss, and the look in his eyes is wistful. And then I’m gone with a _snap_.

 

~ ~ ~


	3. Chapter 3

~ ~ ~

 

Dean doesn’t say a word to his brother, of course. Big surprise there. If Sam notices he’s quieter than usual, it’s probably because he thinks Dean’s still pissed at him. They don’t really speak much that night, or the next day, and after a while I start to wonder if they’ll ever speak again. 

It’s horrible. Really horrible. I feel like my entire world has been shaken. Dean and Castiel is bad enough, but Winchester vs Winchester? It’s too much.

I’m amazingly okay about the sex, though, which is weird. I have moments of hatred towards the angel, and even moments where I hate Dean for abandoning me, despite knowing how ridiculous that is. But what happened seemed so _right_ , and I’m starting to understand that you can’t fight destiny.

And Castiel sensed me. Perhaps... just perhaps... he’ll be able to do it again. Perhaps I’ll be able to talk to him one day, explain what’s happening, get him to tell Dean how I feel. Who knows? There’s a lot of shit going down right now, but at least some good has come out of it.

Sam’s drinking Ruby’s blood. I can sense it. 

Yeah, there’s definitely a lot of shit going down right now.

He’s missing at the moment. Dean’s fast asleep and he has no idea that Sam’s been gone for an hour, or that he took the car. I’m surprised the sound of the engine didn’t wake him up, but Dean’s been pretty tired today. I don’t think he got much sleep last night, what with him pondering his new life choice and everything. I can tell he’s freaked but he’s also kind of thrilled, which is freaking him out all the more. No wonder he’s snoring now. Poor boy’s plum tuckered out from all the confusion.

Castiel is suddenly there, appearing out of the gloom by the bed, and I sigh. I’m not sure I’m ready to watch Round Two just yet. I’m not really sure that Dean’s ready for Round Two just yet, either; it’s too soon for him, surely, because he’s still processing their last encounter, although I have to admit that Dean’s surprising the fuck out of me these days, so who knows? And he surprises me now, because he opens his eyes the instant the angel arrives. It’s weird because I could’ve sworn he was dead to the world. 

“Cas?” he whispers, and sits up. He flips on the light, looks up at his visitor, then glances over at Sam’s bed.

“He’s safe,” Castiel assures him. “He went to meet with Ruby, although I don’t know why.”

“Oh, I can guess,” Dean mutters, and I think sadly, _Oh, it’s so much worse than sex._

“He won’t be back for a while,” Castiel says, putting his hands in his pockets in a far-too-casual manner. “He’s... having car trouble.”

Dean stares up at him, narrowing his eyes suspiciously. “You sound like you had something to do with it.” When he doesn’t get a reply, he frowns. “You son of a bitch. If you’ve hurt my car I’ll never forgive you.”

“It’s easily fixed, but it will delay him.” Castiel sits down on the bed, staring at Dean steadily. “We need to talk.”

“I’m still processing it, Cas,” Dean says quickly. “What we did in that store...” He shakes his head disbelievingly. “I have no words. I can’t even think about it. But I’m still not sure I trust you. You’re so determined to win this war you’re willing to do anything. Destroy towns, kill my brother... Okay, so you’re good in the sack, but it doesn’t exactly even the odds, you know?”

Castiel drops his gaze to the floor. “There’s a physical attraction between us, yes. You know that now. But there’s more, Dean, and we’re just starting to explore that. It runs deeper than mere fornication. We have a connection. You don’t feel it yet, but you will.”

Dean snorts. “You call what we did ‘mere’ fornication? I’m not sure what you’re used to, sunshine, but I’d say there was nothing _mere_ about that. We almost brought the store down on us. Have you any idea how pissed the owner was?”

“Well, poltergeists _are_ very destructive.”

“Yeah, that’s what I told him.”

“Dean...” Castiel takes his hands out of his pockets, but he’s still staring at the floor. I wonder why he always does that: looks anywhere but Dean. Maybe he doesn’t want to look at him until he sees Dean looking back with the same feeling in his eyes. “We need to figure out what to do,” the angel says, sounding nervous all of a sudden. “I can’t keep turning up whenever Sam’s back is turned. I need to stay with you, be your protector. There are creatures out there who know you’re important. You’re in danger, Dean, and you will be until Lilith is stopped.”

Dean snorts. “You saying you want to move in with me? It’s a bit sudden, Cas. I mean, couldn’t you start with a toothbrush? Or just have your own drawer? Although it’s not as though you ever seem to change your socks, I suppose...”

“Everything’s a joke to you, isn’t it?” Castiel raises his eyes and fixes them on the painting hanging on the far wall of the room. It’s a deer of some sort, and it’s ugly as sin. I’d never look at that if I could look at Dean instead. “After all the horrors you’ve been through, you can still make light of the world,” the angel says wistfully. “I don’t understand how you do it.” 

Dean sits silently, staring at him. Then he says, “Come here.” 

Castiel turns to look at him and Dean grabs his tie, pulling him towards him until their lips meet, and it’s such a contrast to their first kiss it’s astonishing. This one’s the kind of sweet kiss Dean gives to a waitress he’s about to spend the night with; the kind of kiss that says, “I’m not going to hurt you, I’m gonna make you feel good, just trust me, okay?” It’s weird seeing him give it to a man. It’s even weirder seeing Castiel’s face soften as he receives it, until he looks like he’s happy. Can angels be happy? I suppose they’re happy when they pray, or something like that, but this has to be a new experience for this particular angel.

“I can’t believe you do this to me,” Dean murmurs, closing his eyes and resting his forehead on Castiel’s. “When you brought me back to life, did you do it... wrong? Did you change me? Because I’m not sure this would have felt so right before I died.”

“You’re all you, Dean. I did nothing except fill you with my Grace. This is fate, and even I am under its spell.”

Dean chuckles. “Then that’s it. It’s a spell. Why else would I want to feel you inside me right now?”

The world seems to freeze and turn into some weird fucking slo-mo syrup around me. Holy shit. Did he _really_ just say that?

Apparently he did, because Castiel doesn’t question it for a second. He kisses Dean hungrily, passionately, and Dean kisses him back, and then they’re a tangle of discarded clothing and arms and legs and sheets on the mattress as they get down to it so quickly it’s like someone flicked a switch from ‘no sex’ to ‘sex like _whoa_ ’. 

“Fuck me,” I hiss, stunned at the speed of events. “What is it with you two?” I laugh mournfully before adding, “And why can’t I have any?”

I watch in seething jealousy as Dean lies flat and lifts his hands above his head, bracing himself by grabbing the edge of the wooden headboard as Castiel moves down his body. He’s breathing hard, looking a little scared, and quite rightly too because he’s never done this before. I’m pretty certain the angel’s never done it either – unless Heaven’s a damn sight more fun than I’ve suspected – but he swallows Dean like the thought of sucking his dick has been the very reason for his existence since God created him. 

I’ve no idea how it feels but I have to say it looks amazing, and Dean starts making those small animal moans he made the last time, sounds still unfamiliar to my ears because they seem so _wild_. Dean’s not wild in bed, despite his boasts. He’s a gentleman. There’s nothing gentlemanly about this. He drops a hand and claws at Castiel’s shoulder, then grabs a handful of his hair, then drops his other hand and grabs two handfuls, and he starts gasping _That’s so good oh fuck that’s so good but it’s not enough get inside me please fuck me please_ and I swear, if I had a face it would be scarlet from blushing. 

I’ve never seen him beg before. Never. Dean Winchester doesn’t _beg_.

Castiel releases him and pulls off his shirt, which I’ve just realized seems to be the same one he always wears only with buttons intact, so he obviously has some weird angel dressmaking skills going on. He throws it across the room and is out of his pants so quickly I wonder if he magicked them off somehow. Dean’s already naked, his arms raised and hanging onto the headboard again, and he’s shining with sweat despite the fact they’ve only been doing this for a few minutes. I stare at his cock, which glistens in the sallow light from the lamp beside the bed, and I fantasize for a moment or two that that’s my saliva on there, and then Castiel’s on his knees between Dean’s legs and is pulling him into position against his lower body like he weighs nothing at all.

“Wait, wait!” Dean’s voice is panicky and Castiel freezes. “Don’t you need some lube or, uh, something? I’ve never done this before, man, but I’m pretty sure you shouldn’t just go in there dry.”

“You didn’t use any on me,” Castiel says in deep voice, and I instantly realize he’s teasing him. His eyes are playful, and it’s such a weird look for him I can’t decide if I like it or not.

“No, but you’ve got special angel powers, you freak. It didn’t hurt you.”

Castiel kisses Dean’s left knee and smiles. “You really think I’d hurt you?”

“Not intentionally, no.” Dean’s lips twitch into a faint grin, but he still looks worried. “But this is... kinda intimate, and I’m not really sure I want to test that theory right now.”

I watch, puzzled, as Castiel moves onto his hands and knees and crawls up Dean’s body. Dean’s still gripping the headboard tightly, like it’s grounding him or something, and I have this sudden crazy notion that the angel’s going to tickle his armpits. But he doesn’t. He leans down so that his lips are level with Dean’s ear and he whispers so quietly I have to drift in close to hear what he says.

“I rebuilt you, Dean Winchester. I took your lifeless husk and I poured my Grace into it. It swirled around your bones, your flesh, your muscles, your cells. It turned decay into health. It revitalized you. It weaved patterns across your brain and spun you new torrents of blood. I know every inch of you, Dean, every atom, every fiber, every molecule. I know how much air fills your lungs and how the neurons fire in your mind. I’m your maker, and if you think I would hurt something that took so much out of me to create, something so precious to me it’s worth more to me than anything in this universe except my Father’s love, then you don’t know me at all. And if that’s the case, I will leave right now if you ask me to.”

I lean back, feeling awkward because I have a feeling I shouldn’t have heard that. That was between Castiel and Dean. That was private. More than sex, more than anything, that was just for their ears. I feel bad. It doesn’t happen to me often; I’m so used to seeing things most people would find embarrassing, I very rarely feel guilt. 

I do now. 

Dean’s eyes are so wide I think his eyeballs are going to fall out. He’s gone pale, and for a moment I’m sure he’s going to get up and run like hell, but instead he releases a soft groan of... _something_ from his chest (pleasure? Pain? Despair?) and watches Castiel slink down his body again without a word. When the angel slots his body into position between his legs, lifting Dean’s hips in the air in the universal signifier for _I’m going to fuck you now, okay?_ he pauses, looking up at Dean from under his brows.

“Do you want me to leave?” he asks.

“Never.” Dean’s voice is small, but it’s determined. 

So Castiel does something I can’t see between his legs and then he’s pushing into Dean with such an expression of peace on his face it almost hurts to look at. Dean clutches the wooden headboard under his hands and lifts his body off the bed, arm muscles bulging, and he cries out something completely unintelligible that neither I, nor all the people staying in the rooms around us can understand, and I know they’re wondering because there was _no way_ they didn’t all just hear that. 

Castiel thrusts and Dean makes another sound, this one unmistakeably pornographic, and I brace myself for a knock on the door from some ticked-off traveler who can’t get to sleep. Jesus, he’s loud. Not that I can blame him. Castiel starts fucking him slow and steady, one hand on his chest and the other on his hip, pure concentration mixed with bliss, looking like he’s found the one place he wants to stay for the rest of his life, apocalypse be damned. Dean shakes and gasps, knuckles white on the wood, and with every pump of the cock inside him he cries out like he’s coming, over and over again. 

It occurs to me that if I could film this and put it on the internet, it would be the most popular video in the history of the world. They both look so beautiful, so determined, and it’s as hot as all Hell. I should know. I’ve been there.

“Stop... oh my living _fuck,_ Cas, _stop_...” But Dean doesn’t really want him to stop, and it’s a good job because Castiel doesn’t want to stop either. He simply pumps harder, faster, and moves his hand from Dean’s chest to his dick, wrapping fingers around it and moving them in time to his rhythm until Dean can’t even speak any more. His eyes roll in his head and he finally releases the headboard and relaxes onto the mattress, his body trembling. And oh, I am _so envious_ of the look on his face. It looks like he’s having the most amazing few minutes of his life, and he’s not overacting or overselling it like the people in the skin-flicks he loves to watch, or making stupid noises like some of the women he’s slept with in the past who are too drunk to know when they’re parodies of themselves. He’s totally and completely _lost_. This is so intense, so amazing, he can barely even process it. He really, truly is experiencing something extraordinary here. 

Who knew angels were this good at ass-fucking?

Dean comes first, which is no surprise considering the state he’s in, and I watch in fascination as he empties himself over Castiel’s hand in long, glistening whorls that are strangely beautiful. I think for a moment that he’s passed out because he goes totally limp against the bed, but he’s just winded, breathless, and his partner hasn’t finished yet so he can’t move anyway. Castiel’s ass is moving so hard and fast that Dean needs to grab the headboard once more to stop his head slamming into it. I’m just smiling at that when wings snap into existence and fill the room so completely there’s barely any room left for me – as it is, one of them shoots straight through me until I move to one side hurriedly. Like last time, Dean sees nothing while I marvel at the singular beauty of feathers in contrast to damp, naked flesh as they quiver with every movement their owner makes. 

Then the angel comes with a long, deep moan that almost sounds like pain. It seems to go on forever and then he collapses, his head landing on Dean’s collarbone, and Dean drops his arms and holds him tight, like he’s never gonna let him go. The wings vanish the moment his hands touch Castiel’s back, and I’m sad to see them leave.

They’re silent for a while, recovering. Dean looks like he’s just done a nine-hour workout and Castiel’s trembling in his arms, like he pushed himself too far or something, and I study the way they’ve wrapped themselves around each other so perfectly, arms and legs interlocking. I can’t see for sure but I think the angel’s still inside Dean and the fact Dean’s just lying there in that situation, nothing but contentment on his face and bathed in afterglow, tells me everything I need to know about how he’s accepting an angel’s love into his life.

It’s totally involuntary, of course, and even I’m shocked when the ugly deer picture leaps away from the wall across the room. It hits the floor with a clatter that makes both men jump; they both jolt upright after some hasty untangling of limbs. And other things.

“Spirit,” Dean hisses, shoving Castiel to one side and climbing out of bed. He pulls on his pants – with difficulty, I notice, because he’s half-hard again – and then marches over to his bag to grab his shotgun. He looks so determined, and yet so tousled and sweaty and wanton, that I giggle at the paradox. It comes out sounding slightly hysterical, and Castiel stands bolt upright and looks around him sharply as he wraps a sheet around his waist.

“I can hear it laughing,” he says, and I glide over to him, suddenly desperate to make my presence known.

“Castiel – can you hear me? Please tell me you can hear me!”

He frowns and takes a step forward. “I think... it just said my name.”

“Please! Listen to me, please!” I’m concentrating as hard as I can, willing my entire being into physical form, and as I do so Dean makes a warning sound as the breath leaving his lungs turns to a huff of frost.

Castiel takes another step forward, and then suddenly he’s standing where I’m standing, both of us inhabiting the same space. Normally this isn’t an issue. Normally people walk through me all the time, and neither the living nor the dead can sense it. But I can feel _him._ There’s warmth all around me, the first time I’ve felt it in generations, and I suck as much of it from him as I can without being conscious of the action. I’m greedy, I’m hungry, I’m _starving_ for it – it’s something from the world I left behind, and as I sense it I wail in recognition and am reminded of everything I have lost. It crushes me; it’s a feeling so powerful I’m lost before it, and suddenly the warmth of Castiel is the only thing in the universe for me right now.

The angel falls to his knees. I realize I’m taking too much but I can’t stop, couldn’t stop in a million years, and I start apologizing even as I siphon off his life force like a leech, hating myself but totally helpless to do anything about it.

“Cas!” Dean’s leaning over him urgently, gripping his shoulders, and Castiel looks up at him and gasps. His face is twisted in pain and oh my God, I’m doing that, I’m causing it, and so help me I’m _killing_ him, getting rid of my rival, and yet I don’t want to. Maybe last month, maybe a few weeks ago, but not now, not after I’ve seen him look happy as he kissed Dean, and I’ve seen Dean go to him because he’s _supposed_ to go him because that’s where he belongs. I don’t want to destroy the angel; I want him to look after Dean because that’s something I’ll never be able to do myself, and yet all I can do is suck everything angelic out of him until there’s nothing left because I’m not strong enough to fight it...

“I can’t stop!” I scream, hoping one of them can hear me. “Get away from me! I can’t stop myself! I don’t want to hurt you!”

Castiel seems to hear; he tries to stand, reaching up to take Dean’s arm for support, but his hand misses and hits his chest. He moves it upwards, fingers brushing the amulet...

...and there’s an explosion, strong enough to send the angel flying backwards until he hits the wall; strong enough to do the same for me, but in the opposite direction. I hit it with my back and fall to the floor, gasping, and just as I realize I felt the impact – that the wall was a solid object I didn’t pass through – I realize I’m also _gasping_ and that means I’m _breathing_ , even though I can already tell it’s not because I’m alive. I’m just going through the motions, but it means I have a body, of sorts.

I look down at my hands. _I have hands._ And beneath them, _knees_. I’m wearing brown breeches, mud-stained and ancient, and I look down my chest at a filthy, bloodstained shirt and braces. Clothes from another era. The clothes I wore when I died.

I look up and Castiel’s staring at me with wide eyes.

“What is it? What happened?” Dean’s all business, still holding the shotgun, and he helps Castiel to his feet and follows his gaze over to me. Only he just frowns and looks back at the angel; he can’t see me. Only Castiel can see me. Only _I_ can see me.

“Am I here?” I ask, and my voice sounds different. Stronger. More human. Real. “Am I really here?”

“Yes.” Castiel straightens, still breathing heavily. He sways a little and Dean takes his arm.

“Yes what?” Dean asks.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” I say quickly. God, I have to handle this right. I’ve dreamed of this moment for so long but I don’t want to get salted and burned before I’ve had a chance to explain myself. Castiel knows I’m attached to the amulet now; all he has to do is take it and throw it into the sea and that’s it for me. Or he could destroy it, cursing me to limbo. Or he could do a million other things I’ve never thought of, or cast me into Hell, or simply annihilate me. Who knows what an angel is capable of? 

_Don’t fuck this up,_ I think. 

“You drained me,” Castiel says, as Dean looks from him to my side of the room with eyes that are wide with confusion. “You couldn’t help yourself.”

“No, no, you’re right, I couldn’t! Once I felt your warmth... It’s been so long, I’m so sorry, it was instinct and I just couldn’t fight it.” I stop, running a hand along my jaw, realizing that it’s moving up and down. “I have a body,” I say breathlessly. “I’m still a spirit, but I have a body. This is... oh my God, I can’t believe this.”

Castiel turns to Dean. “Take off your necklace,” he orders him, and I go cold. I actually go cold. 

“What the hell is going on?” Dean demands, but he does it. He pulls the string around his neck and hands the amulet to Castiel. I feel a sharp tug as my connection to him severs, as it always does when he removes me, and I clutch at my stomach because it hurts all of a sudden, like I’m seasick.

“This is a cursed object,” Castiel explains, studying the pendant thoughtfully. He dangles it before him, taking care not to touch it, and I wonder what would happen if he did. Would there be another explosion? “There’s a spirit bound into it, one I can only assume has been bound into it for a long time.”

“What, seriously?” Dean looks stunned. “Sam gave me it for Christmas when I was a kid. It’s supposed to protect me or something, but I didn’t think it really had any power.”

“I tried,” I moan, climbing shakily to my feet. “I tried so hard, Dean. I was always there, through it all, but I couldn’t do anything to help. Your whole life, I watched over you, but I couldn’t stop any of the bad things.”

Castiel watches me seriously. “How long have you been cursed?” 

I smile thinly. “Since the year of our Lord seventeen-hundred and ninety-nine. It was a miserable year. Particularly for me.”

“Can you see it?” Dean keeps staring at me, only his eyes are seeing through me to the wall. It’s unnerving.

“Yes.” The angel steps forward. “What’s your name?”

I have to think. Actually stop and think. It’s my name, for fuck’s sake, but I’ve not said it aloud in over two hundred years, and nobody on the planet remembers it but me. And I can barely even do that.

“M-McKenzie,” I answer hesitantly. “Daniel McKenzie.”

Castiel turns to Dean and imparts the news to him. I’m starting to feel heartened; I’ve not been banished yet, or exorcized, so perhaps my dreams of Castiel acting as an interpreter between myself and Dean are actually going to come true after all.

“Okay,” Dean says, looking in my direction. He seems a little uncomfortable, but he forces a grin. “I, uh... hello, Daniel.”

He said my name. Oh my God, Dean Winchester said my name.

I burst into tears. Real fucking tears. I can feel them squeezing from my eyes, their wetness on my cheeks, and my chin wobbles and I sob like a baby. This is too much. After so long, this is too much.

Castiel doesn’t say anything, and Dean nudges him. “What’s it doing?”

_Don’t tell him I’m crying,_ I think frantically. _He’ll think I’m a wuss._

“He said hello back,” Castiel tells Dean, and that’s it, I love this angel more than anything now.

“I was cursed by a warlock,” I manage to gulp out. “Me and him, we were having an affair. I was so young, and he was so handsome...” _He looked like Dean._ “...and we were in love, or so I thought, until we were discovered in bed together. He managed to get away without my Pa seeing his face, and nobody knew it was him. The villagers called me names, said I was possessed by the Devil, said I was casting spells and cursing them all. It wasn’t true, I wasn’t meddling in anything. The crops were failing because there was too much rain, that’s all. The village only survived a few more years and they all moved away anyway. But they didn’t know that, so they killed me. They said I was evil, but really it was because I was in love with a man. They couldn’t bear to let me live.”

Castiel stares at me impassively. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“What did it say?”

“I’m a _he_ , not an _it_ ,” I snap at Dean, without thinking.

Castiel repeats my story without taking his eyes off me. “Well, that sucks,” Dean says when he’s finished. Then he looks at back at the bed, registers the fact that both he and Castiel are shirtless and cracks a rueful grin. “I guess times have changed, huh? It must hurt, knowing the stuff that got you killed back then goes on all the time now. Not that we’re, uh...” He pauses, looking uncomfortable. “I mean, people are still homophobic, but they don’t...”

“Drown people?”

“He was drowned,” Castiel says. 

“Right,” Dean nods. “They don’t do that any more. That’s... I’m sorry, Daniel.”

“Thank you,” I say, and Castiel echoes the words back to him. I start to talk, then, the words spilling out of me in torrents, like they’re the brackish water that once filled my lungs. I describe how Thomas bound me to the amulet, how I spent year after year passing from companion to companion, how I travelled the globe and saw amazing sights but never understood what had happened to me until Bobby Singer bought me from a hunter in Texas as he was starting on his own personal visionquest to find out how to hunt the kind of creatures who possessed his wife. I tell the angel how I used to see Sam and Dean playing in Bobby’s yard as John watched them with a sad smile on his face, and how thrilled I was when Bobby gave me to Sam because I wanted to watch them grow up, to go out on the road with them, and how relieved I was when I ended up around Dean’s neck. 

I tell him how I’ve always been with Dean, _always_ , with the only exceptions being the times he’s spent in hospital and the job the brothers did at the prison, when Dean took me off first so I wasn’t confiscated by the cops.

“Always?” Dean asks nervously, and I can’t help but smile at him, even though he can’t see me. “You didn’t ever step out of the room to give a guy some privacy from time to time? Like, uh, five minutes ago, maybe?”

“You’ve got nothing to be embarrassed about, Dean,” I say, as Castiel repeats the words. “Except maybe that waitress in Tampa.”

Dean doesn’t seem to know whether to laugh or frown at that, but I can’t stop talking. I explain how I went to Hell but also stayed with Sam, and I try to convey how weird it was to leave Dean the moment Castiel pulled him out of the Pit and then finding myself hanging around Sam’s neck with both sets of memories intact, like both my lives were roads that separated and then converged with each other again like nothing had happened.

“You went to _Hell_ with me?” Dean snaps, suddenly looking freaked. And angry. I shiver, and Jesus, shivering’s weird when you haven’t done it for so long. All trembly and cold.

“I was trapped inside the necklace,” I explain. “It wasn’t like it is up here; I couldn’t leave it and walk around. I was looking out of it, at everything that was happening, but for most of the time I couldn’t see your face. I could only hear you screaming. I was covered in blood, and it was like I was suffering, too, just knowing what you were going through.”

Castiel doesn’t tell Dean what I just said. His face twitches and I realize I’ve revealed too much. 

“I love him,” I say slowly. “Please can you tell him that I love him?”

Castiel remains stoic.

“So you were with Sam while I was gone?” Dean continues, oblivious, as I stare into Castiel’s eyes. They’re emotionless. “You saw what he got up to?”

“Yes,” I answer, collecting my thoughts, and Castiel nods for me.

“Anything I should know about?” Dean says tightly, and I can hear how much he hates himself for asking, but he can’t hold back.

“It was horrible,” I say. “Endless dwarf sex parties.” 

Castiel’s eyes flash with amusement as he echoes my words. “You’ve definitely been hangin’ around me too long,” Dean huffs, sitting on the bed and shaking his head. “You’ve picked up my sense of humor.”

“Tell him I love him, Castiel,” I plead.

“No.”

The lamp beside the bed topples over, the bulb smashing. Dean’s on his feet again in an instant. “What’s goin’ on?”

“Please, Cas. Just tell him! He’s my everything! He’s the only thing that’s kept me going for the last few decades! He has to know how I feel, or it’s all been for nothing!”

“No,” Castiel says again, and his face twists in regret. “Dean, we need to be alone. Wait outside.”

“What the hell...”

Dean’s gone. Disappeared, just like that. I gasp, and then I hear him banging on the outside of the door, demanding to be let inside and calling Castiel some really horrible names.

“He mustn’t know,” Castiel says, coming to stand right in front of me; he’s intimidating when he’s up close, and I can feel all that angelic power flicker around him. “Have you any idea how he’d feel, knowing that someone loved him so much, for so long, and he didn’t even notice? If he knew that your love was that powerful, but it meant nothing? That you were weak, and helpless, and your feelings counted for absolutely nothing?”

“I don’t understand,” I moan. 

“Dean doesn’t believe in love,” Castiel says, and his voice is full of wisdom and grief. “He needs to know that love is _everything_ , Daniel. It’s the only way he’ll ever be happy. You know him. You know this is true. If I tell him you love him, and he has to reject you, what does that say of the power of such an emotion? It says that love doesn’t matter. But it _does._ I’m sorry that this has to end this way, but I can’t hurt him. He still has so far to go.”

“With you, you mean,” I snap, my voice bitter. “You stole him from me.”

Castiel blinks, surprised at my tone, and I see everything fall into place. “You’re jealous,” he says quietly, and not a little dangerously. “You want him for yourself. That’s why you’ve been moving things around, why your powers have grown stronger after so many years. You’re propelled by hate.”

I whimper. It’s pitiful, I know, but he’s scaring me. “I don’t want to be. I want to be good, Castiel. I don’t want to be angry, to turn into a poltergeist. I don’t want to hurt him because he loves somebody else. I want to be happy for both of you, because I know you belong together, but it’s so hard – he was mine for so long...”

“He was never yours,” Castiel points out, but there’s sympathy in his voice. “I’m sorry, Daniel. The time has come for you to move on, but you will at least go in peace.”

I sink down the wall to the floor, gripping my knees tightly. “He never even saw me,” I snuffle, knowing I sound pathetic but not caring. “He never even saw my _face_.”

Castiel twitches his hand and the door bursts open. Dean enters the room like Kramer from _Seinfeld_ , all flailing arms and crazy expression. He’s pissed. “It’s fucking freezing out there,” he shouts, slamming the door behind him. “What the fuck were you two doing in here that justified turning my balls into popsicles?”

“Talking,” Castiel tells him calmly. He looks down at me, then reaches out and takes Dean’s hand. “Come.”

He marches him into the bathroom, turns on the light and positions a sputtering, annoyed Dean in front of the mirror. Then he returns to my side and kneels on the carpet before me. 

“Join him,” he orders, and his voice is kind. “Go and stand in front of the mirror.”

“Why?”

“Consider it a thank-you gift from me. For watching over him.”

I’m puzzled, but I stand up, finding that walking comes easy despite my unfamiliarity with moving my legs. Like riding a bike, I guess. I hesitate at the bathroom door, looking back at the angel, and he smiles and motions me inside the room, his expression munificent and... well, angelic. It’s weird, but suddenly I trust him.

Dean’s staring at himself in the mirror with an exasperated expression. He’s shivering and he doesn’t look happy. I stand beside him, studying the line of his jaw, the stubble on his chin, the movement of his chest as he breathes in and out. Then I turn and look in the mirror.

Nothing happens at first, and then... I appear.

I’m hazy, and I have to squint for a few moments before the image gets stronger, and then I’m one hundred per cent _there._ Startled brown eyes stare back at me and a hand flies to my mouth in shock. The moment I see my face, my memories come back in a rush, a wave of images and sensations I never thought I’d experience again. 

I was handsome, I remember, the most handsome boy in the village, and the girls used to pretend to swoon as they walked by me and they’d giggle when I shot looks their way. I was lithe and healthy despite the poor diet we all had back then. I was training to be a blacksmith like my Pa and my arm muscles were impressive from all the physical work he made me do, though I used to hate him for it. God, I used to hate him. He used to say I was as pretty as a girl and he mocked everything about me, from my eyes to my hair, which I can see now, falling to my shoulders in brown waves, greasy and mud-filled because that’s how it looked when I died. My face is dirty and streaked with tears but it’s _me_ , I’m there in the mirror, and I can’t believe it.

“Oh, hey,” Dean says beside me, and I jump in shock. I turn to look at him and he turns to look at me, but he can’t see me, so he turns back to the mirror, where he can. “I guess you’re Daniel, then,” he says mildly.

I nod, my eyes wide with amazement, and manage to smile. Dean’s reflection smiles back. 

“Dean,” I say.

He frowns. “I still can’t hear you, and I’m not much with the lip-reading, I’m afraid.”

I nod again, signalling that I understand. He’s looking me up and down, taking me in, probably wondering why I’m so filthy and my clothes are so wrecked and old-fashioned, but I don’t care. Dean’s seeing me for the very first time, and I’ve never been so happy in my death.

“Sorry I didn’t know you were there,” he says. “That must’ve been frustrating.”

I nod so emphatically that he laughs. “Man, the things you must’ve seen. All those bitch fights between me and Sam?” I smile. “The arguments with Dad? The hunts we’ve been on? The, uh, other stuff?” I grin, because I know he’s never gonna stop thinking about how I must’ve watched him have sex and beat off and watch porn. “All that, and I had no idea,” he continues, and whistles in amazement.

I shrug, because it’s all I can do, and then I reach out a hand and place a finger on the mirror, smoothing it down the side of Dean’s face. He looks surprised, then draws in a breath and does the same to me. 

If I wasn’t dead already, I’d be dead now. Oh my _God_. Dean, caressing my face. It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.

“You look like a good kid, Daniel,” he says. “Wish I could’ve known you.” 

“I love you.”

He’s looking at his hand and he misses my lips moving in the mirror, so I say it again when he glances up. He frowns. “Sorry, what was that? Cas? I need a translator in here.”

“He said ‘Goodbye’,” Castiel says from the doorway, and I turn to glare at him. When I look back, my reflection has gone. Dean stares into the glass for a moment and then shakes his head.

“What’re you gonna do?” he asks Castiel. 

“He will join the Lord.”

“What if I want to stay?” I announce. “What if I decide I don’t want to move on?”

Castiel sighs. “You have no choice, child. You are dead. You can’t stay on this plane. Heaven awaits.”

I clamp my jaw shut, stunned, and to my surprise Dean says what I’m thinking. “Heaven? He’s going to the good place?”

“Yes.” Castiel’s eyes fill with warmth. “You’ve suffered long enough, Daniel. Now you can rest.”

“But... _Dean._ ” My voice is breaking again. Dammit, I’m in human form for a few minutes and I’ve done nothing but cry like a girl. “What about Dean?”

“You know he will be looked after.”

“And Sam! You don’t trust Sam! He’s not evil, Castiel. Tell Dean that he’s not evil!”

Castiel looks uncertain, but I glare at him until he does. As he relays the message I’m hit by a thought – should I tell them he’s been drinking demon blood? Is it my place to do that? But I don’t, because it’s Sam’s business, not theirs, and besides... He’s _Sammy_. He’s the little boy who wrapped me in cartoon-covered newspaper and handed me to Dean one miserable Christmas night when their Pa was out killing something evil and they were on their own. He’s the kid who learned the same night that monsters were real. He’s the kid who grew up to find he could be a monster himself. He’s the kid who mourned for four months while I hung around his neck and mourned, too. He’s the kid who loves Dean more than anything else in the world, and he’s the kid Dean loves more than anything else in the world, too.

“Sam loves you, Dean,” I say, and try to take Dean’s arm but my hand goes right through it. Castiel passes on my message, and Dean nods, his eyes suspiciously bright.

“I know,” he says.

I look at the angel, seeing him gazing at Dean all that _feeling_ in his eyes, and I sigh. “Castiel loves you too. You need to know that.”

“I’m not...”

“Tell him.”

Castiel keeps his voice measured. “He says you need to know that I love you, too.”

Dean throws his hands up in mock despair. “Holy crap, what is this? Lovefest 2009? Is there anybody out there who _doesn’t_ love me?”

I give Castiel a despairing look, but he says nothing, and I give up. Dean will never know I love him. Fuck. Maybe Castiel’s right. Maybe he does need to think that love will conquer all, and the fact that my love couldn’t conquer jack-shit isn’t really what he needs to hear. 

“Okay, you win,” I say to the angel. “All you have to do now is make Dean feel love too.”

“I will,” Castiel replies with confidence, and he smiles. I think back to when they first met, how they reminded me of Tony and Maria from _West Side Story_ meeting at the dance at the gym, and I remember that Tony died at the end of that particular love affair. I shudder, thinking of everything stacked against Dean and Castiel: Lilith, Lucifer, the end of the world, Sam and his powers, all the random demons from here to eternity, not to mention all the other supernatural beasties they meet along the way, and I wonder how the fuck they’ll come out the other side of all that unscathed.

And then Castiel glances at Dean, and Dean looks across at him, and I see such protectiveness in both their gazes that I feel a little flicker of hope. They’re on the edges of the dancefloor, and they’re about to dance for real this time, not like their first meeting in Hell. The whole world is about to go away, just like it did for Tony and Maria.

“Say goodbye to Sam and Bobby for me,” I tell the angel, and hold myself straight, trying to go out with my shoulders square. I should feel nervous, but I don’t. I just feel tired, for the first time in what seems like forever. Tired, and finished. There’s nothing else I can do. I’m spent. _Dead._

“It’ll be nice to get some rest,” I announce, and my voice is filled with weariness. “I haven’t slept in two hundred and ten years, you know.”

Castiel places the amulet on his palm. He places his other hand on top of it. He furrows his brow, concentrating on breaking the curse, and I feel a curious sensation flow through me, like I’m coming apart, or floating, or being blown by a warm, flower-scented breeze. I can feel the sun, I realize. There’s a light ahead of me and I can feel its heat. It’s... welcoming. 

I sigh and give myself over to it.

“Sweet dreams, Daniel McKenzie,” Castiel murmurs, and the last thing I see is Dean place a hand on his arm before the light takes me.

 

~ ~ ~

 

I thought it all started going wrong when the angel arrived. Looking back, however, I think that was actually when it started going _right._

 

~ ~ ~

 

_Good night, good night_  
Sleep well and when you dream  
Dream of me   
Tonight 

~ ‘Tonight’, West Side Story

 

~ ~ ~


End file.
